


one three four three four zero

by mareza



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: (but is he though?), But also, Canon Compliant, Dehumanization, Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd Being an Edgy Asshole, Eventual Happy Ending, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Felix Hugo Fraldarius Being an Asshole, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Blue Lions Route, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Blue Lions Route Spoilers, Full Recruitment Blue Lions Route, Grief/Mourning, Hallucinations, I am (not) Ferdinand von Aegir, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Nonbinary My Unit | Byleth, Sylvain Jose Gautier Being An Idiot, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, a tonal war between the premise of the fic and the psychological states of its protagonists, by working with the canon ending, character tags to be added as they show up, committing really hard to an absurd premise, once some Baggage is dealt with, the tragedy of felix's points almost always being valid but his vibes almost always being wack, war is hell and so are other people, which means comphet marriage is a thing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-25
Updated: 2020-08-24
Packaged: 2020-10-27 23:08:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 62,946
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20768465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mareza/pseuds/mareza
Summary: “How are you going to get the One-Eyed Demon of Garreg Mach, the Boar Prince of Faerghus, smuggled past Dukedom soldiers? What plan could you possibly have to get a creature that incapable of evenpretendingit isn’t a bloodthirsty beast into Dominic without getting caught?”The Professor gives him one of their steady, unreadable stares. They definitely do not and could not possibly have answered him, “You’re going to pretend to be married to him.”or, How to Pretend to be Married When One of You Can't Stop Hallucinating and the Other One Uses Hostility to Cope





	1. intro: minor planet designation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You ever pose yourself a really absurd question like "who would be the worst possible fake relationship couple at the worst possible point in canon" and then decide to commit?
> 
> warnings: Dehumanization. So much dehumanization. There's your usual canon elements of violence, warfare and its terrible consequences on individuals and groups, general mental health problems, hallucinations, Dimitri not hiding his death wish well at all, and probably more as we go. But this is about Felix's struggle with grief, and a major part of that is his difficulty reconciling with Dimitri's behavior, so the dehumanization is right in the shifting nouns and pronouns used for Dimitri in the narration. It's going to be there a Lot until we get through to after Gronder.
> 
> Dimitri's section in the prologue is particularly strong on self-dehumanization. If you need to skip it, it's right at the end. Its function is to contextualize how much Dimitri has internalized a very negative self-image.
> 
> M is for tone, and also because Felix is stressed out and needs to curse. Also, this is the sort of slow burn you get when two people have loved each other their entire lives but neither one of them is able to face those feelings head on because they're too busy being messes, so. It's gonna be a while before romance is even a thought in anyone's head.

There’s a problem with the Professor’s plan.

Staring it down at the war council, Felix can’t think his way around it. No one else has raised any objections. They’ve all nodded along like this is fine and continued discussion of how to smuggle their soldiers into Dukedom territory. Ferdinand suggests using the Imperial armor he and his people had fled with as a disguise. Ashe shares useful information about the Gaspard territory. Ignatz offers to slip troops through with his and Raphael’s merchant allies under the guise of a trading venture. 

Every one of them seems to have missed the gaping flaw in this idea that they can hide their identities enough to get a quarter of their army to the edge of Baron Dominic’s lands. So now Felix has to be the asshole. Again.

“Professor,” he says.

The Professor looks at him briefly and pointedly. Felix rolls his eyes. Then he raises his hand.

“Yes, Felix?” the Professor asks.

“You forgot the boar.”

He expects some reaction, even from someone that muted: confusion, surprise at the lapse, irritation at him for bringing up the boar (not) in the room. He does not expect the Professor to state with utmost calm, “I didn’t forget Dimitri.”

“Really.” Felix drops his hand so he can fold his arms. “So, what. You’ll have him masquerade as one of the Victor Company merchants? Or perhaps a _wandering opera singer_?” Sylvain starts snickering; Felix shoves him. It is, as Felix regularly tells Sylvain, and as Sylvain regularly refuses to believe, the only reason he sits beside him at war council. “The boar is no longer pretending to be human, Professor. It may still put up the charade of walking on its hind legs, but that’s it.”

“_Felix_,” Ingrid warns, but she didn’t raise her hand and the Professor gestures for her to wait her turn. 

“I didn’t forget Dimitri.” The Professor more pronounces than says it, and then their attention shifts to the rest of the room. “Any other comments?”

The dismissal rankles, but there’s nothing to be done for it. Felix has gotten this far trusting in the Professor, and there’s no backing out now. For the rest of the meeting, they pool their collective knowledge of the territory around Dominic lands, determine which battalions they’ll be able to bring over and which should stay to defend the monastery, and discuss bringing back provisions on the return trip. 

“This is only a contingency plan,” Byleth reminds them before close of meeting. “If things go well with Baron Dominic, we won’t need to fight.”

To Felix, that is all but a guarantee that they’ll be spilling the blood of Dominic soldiers by the end of the week. But apparently no one cares what he thinks.

Ignoring dinner offers from Ingrid and Sylvain, and then Mercedes, and finally from Ashe, Felix begins the exhausting route back towards the Cathedral to check the damn beast hasn’t eaten a rock or something, only to be stopped by the Professor outside one of the offices—Seteth’s—saying, “I’d like to talk to you about the rest of the plan.”

“Amazing. Thanks for letting me in on it,” Felix replies, which the Professor completely ignores. They step into the empty office instead, and Felix follows.

“You’re right that we can’t expect to smuggle Dimitri into the Dukedom the way we would any other soldier,” the Professor tells him. “He’s too recognizable and too quick to fight enemies.”

As usual, being right does not make Felix less irritated. “Then what? We can’t leave him behind. That creature barely eats without Mercedes or Ashe showing up to offer it dinner, and even then it leaves the plate untouched more nights than it doesn’t. If you leave him here, the boar will starve to death.”

“I’m not abandoning him.” Simply and insistently, like they’ve anticipated all of Felix’s objections and are just guiding him to the obvious answer. “He’s coming with us.”

“How.” Felix rakes a hand through as much of his hair as he can, which is none of it, and immediately regrets the messy consequences. (“Do you have… three parts?” Ashe once asked, while Annette tried to get up on her toes to look at the top.) “How are you going to get the One-Eyed Demon of Garreg Mach, the Boar Prince of Faerghus, smuggled past Dukedom soldiers? What plan could you possibly have to get a creature that incapable of even _pretending_ it isn’t a bloodthirsty beast into Dominic without getting caught?”

The Professor gives him one of their steady, unreadable stares. They definitely do not and could not possibly have answered him, “You’re going to pretend to be married to him.”

Felix waits for reality to kick. For the real suggestion to be made. Something sane, like _We’re going to drug him and hide him in an empty wine casket_ or _We’re going to dress Dimitri as a traveling clown._

Reality does not kick in, and Felix continues to live in a farce.

“That is—that’s completely absurd,” Felix eventually manages. “You’re as out of your mind as he is.”

“As you said, they’ll be looking for Dimitri,” the Professor continues, like they didn’t hear him. “They won’t look for a married couple seeking refuge in the Dukedom.”

These sentences are technically true. They are so technically true, and the conclusion drawn from them so farfetched, Felix cannot seem to find a way to point this out. Despite this, Felix tries his best. “He’s a wild animal. A _beast_.”

Byleth blinks at him. “Does that mean you don’t want to?”

“_Of course I don’t want to pretend to be married to the boar._” Felix is gesturing hard now, while the Professor has barely moved, which makes _him_ seem like the one being absurd. “He’s a rabid animal that hasn’t had a bath since the fall of Garreg Mach!”

“He has probably bathed at least once since then,” is the Professor’s reply.

“I’m not doing it,” Felix says.

“Okay,” answers Byleth. “I’ll ask Mercedes.”

“_Absolutely not_,” Felix snaps back. “Only I can handle the boar.” 

In the moment after these sounds become meaning in the air before them, Felix is struck with exact same feeling of vertigo he gets when he takes one step too far into in a mage’s range.

“Like you said,” the Professor replies. “We can’t leave him here alone, and we’ll need something persuasive and distracting for crossing through Dukedom towns.”

Felix stares at them. They smile at him, steady and slight. He keeps staring. They do not stop smiling. 

He looks away, and this time he doesn’t care what he’s doing to his hair by dragging his fingers through it.

“Fine. But first wrestle the damn beast into a bath.”  


“I’ll comply,” is the growl that greets Felix when they go to find the boar.

He’s in his usual haunting spot. He does not turn to face them. He continues to stare at the pile of rubble, as if even when it comes to inanimate matter he shuns the living for the dead.

“Thank you,” Byleth replies. They’re answered with nothing more than a grunt as the beast’s full attention seems to return to the broken marble and stone before him. Its fingers curl around nothing—longing for the support of its lance, most likely, but the boar had let the Professor take it away when they pointed out that it would be a problem if he broke all their weapons before they ever got to Enbarr. 

“Dimitri,” the Professor continues, still gentle. “We also need you to take a bath.”

Nothing.

“We can add crushed chamomile to the water,” they offer.

“Luxuries are for the living,” the boar rumbles. “They’re wasted on the dead.”

Felix’s fingers twitch. He feel like he is approximately ten seconds from shaking the boar by his blood-soaked cloak, and he has to bite into his palms with his fingernails to make himself stop.

“That’s your problem, boar. _You_ may be dead, but the rest of us happen to be alive. So get in a damn bath before I drag you down to the well and push you into that instead.”

There’s a momentary shift of attention. The boar’s head turns towards him, just slightly. It puts Felix in line of the creature’s good eye. 

The boar doesn’t say anything. But it hits Felix: there is one thought that would come first to the mind of an animal so trapped in the past. A boy and his brother. A cold, deep well.

When Felix meets that gaze, he finds no hint of resistance to drowning.

Felix steps back. “This is pointless,” he tells them both. He turns around and then a hand has his arm and he opens his mouth to snap at the Professor, except the hand is too large, gauntleted in sharp metal—

“Felix.” His name is a lingering whisper on those lips. The beast pauses and looks him over, a single eye that seems to see right through him. 

Felix fights the childish compulsion to bite his nose.

“Yes,” Felix scowls instead, “It’s me. Not a ghost, not my father, not _Glenn_. Get off before you spread your damn stench to me.”

Dimitri lets go.

Then the great beast turns away and starts walking. Felix finds himself stupidly still for a moment before he’s at its heels, snapping, “Where do you think you’re going?”

“A foolish question,” the boar answers. “To the baths.” 

That should be a relief, but somehow, it isn’t. Felix keeps pace, sneering, “Do you even remember how to bathe?”

“Yes,” the boar says, his eye no longer for Felix but on a distant memory. “There is no tracking Imperial beasts when their scent hounds can find you twice as fast.”

Felix wonders, not for the first time, if Dimitri is even _capable_ of not taking a question seriously. 

Then he remembers that Dimitri is dead, and this is a corpse lumbering through the bathhouse door and pulling it open. The thing stripping down in front of him is nothing more than a beast that has given up on playing human.

Wait.

It isn’t exactly like Dimitri stripping down to bathe is completely unfamiliar, but Felix still feels a panic rising in his throat and choking out of him, “What are you _doing_?”

The boar turns, his dented breastplate in hand. He looks at Felix as if Felix is the idiot and not the only person around with any sense. “I am bathing, Felix. That you might enjoy _the luxuries afforded to the living._ That’s what you want from me, is it not?” 

Felix, who is definitely in the right here, snaps, “So you’re just going to do that in my company.” 

The boar has the audacity to raise the eyebrow over the one functioning eye he has. “_You_ followed _me_.”

Felix shuts the door in its face.  


Their armor has been packed up and added to the merchant convoys to be sent through with Leonie and Victor's groups. They’ve traded their fine furs for more rough-spun, common clothing. But the boar insists that his cloak—finally laundered, thanks to Byleth’s persistence—be packed with the few goods they are to keep at their sides. When Felix calls him an idiot for it, he only glances back over at him, growls low, and says, “If death finds me on the march, I will greet it in my father’s colors. The cloak must stay.”

A sickness rises up in Felix, ugly and suffocating. He swallows it down and tastes acid in his throat. “It’s packing the cloak that’s going to bring death to you, boar. It isn’t as if I’m trying to drag the damn Aegis Shield with us.”

The beast merely smiles, slow and wide. It’s an awful smile. It burns over memories a decade old. “That is the difference between us,” the beast answers, sounding so rational, so aware. “It has been a long time since you have wanted to die as your father’s son.”

Felix leaves to pack the rest of his things on his own.

But the mission is still happening, whether Felix can tolerate the boar’s company or not. So Felix, the boar, and the boar’s damn cloak, along with a couple of steel swords and spears—silver would catch too much attention—are packed up and brought to the monastery steps for final instructions from Byleth.

“Remember,” Byleth says to Felix, “You can’t use his name.”

“That won't be a problem for him,” the boar grumbles. Felix looks at him. The boar only grunts in reply.

Felix folds his arms. “Remind _him_ not to talk about tearing the heads off of Imperials.” 

“Dimitri,” says the Professor, “Remember not to talk about tearing the heads off of Imperials.”

The boar _does_ look at the Professor. The Professor does not blink. The boar keeps looking.

It is a staring contest the boar loses fast.

“Just see to it that this brings me closer to that woman’s death,” the boar mutters. 

Accepting this as agreement, the Professor returns to the briefing. “The rendezvous is at the end of the week. You’re Richard—” (a growl) “—and Yuri—” (a scoff) “—Lowell from Galatea territory. You’re wary about rumors of the family breaking neutrality to enter more active warfare, so you’re seeking refuge with House Dominic.”

It’s what Felix and the Professor decided would be easiest. It is too risky to claim to be from either of their family’s territories, and Gautier is too overtly loyalist, but they both know Galatea well enough from their childhoods that they should be able to convince anyone from the region that they are natives.

As long as the damn beast can remember his humanity enough to get them through populated areas.

“How long have we been married?” asks the boar, startling Felix out of his thoughts.

The Professor pauses a moment. “Two moons. You wanted to marry five years ago but were separated in the war. You’ve only just found each other again.”

“You’re fucking kidding me,” Felix says.

“Language, Felix,” says the Professor.

The boar, unbelievably, has been nodding along to this, as if it is perfectly reasonable. Felix takes this as further proof it is not. “Of course. And companions since childhood, introduced by our fathers, who had themselves been as close as brothers in their time.” 

“No.”

“Yes,” Byleth says. “Dimitri is right. It will be easier to remember your story the less you have to invent.”

Felix grits his teeth, tight as he can, but the tension drawing up and down his jaw isn’t enough to push the nausea down. This is stupid. Disgusting. It’s their lives gutted of the ugly reality and returned for the funeral as a sword and warped plate mail. 

“So this is how you constructed your mask of humanity, is it,” Felix asks the boar. “By taking true things and twisting them into pleasant lies.” 

Damn him, but the beast just nods. “The palace was full of those who were eager to see their Crown Prince recovered. It was trivial to persuade them of my survival.” 

“You’re lying,” Felix says, unable to help himself, because he _remembers_. He _remembers_ how stilted and distant Dimitri had been those first few moons, numb to every kindness offered to him, quick to panic when Dedue was out of his sight. He remembers being terrified at the way Dimitri would drift off in the middle of a conversation, or start snapping anything in his hands with an anxiousness that had no clear source, or laugh at nothing until he was sobbing his throat raw. 

He remembers his relief when Dimitri finally seemed to have returned. He remembers how it felt when he realized Dimitri was never coming back.

“Don’t pretend it was easy,” Felix tells this inhuman creature, this parody of his friend. “It _wasn’t_.”

The boar watches him for a moment. Felix waits for an argument, bitter words. A strike.

He gets nothing.

Felix folds his arms. “Fine,” he says to the Professor, tired of talking with animals. “So when I’m asked for inane childhood stories, I’ll bring up the time he ate enough sweet buns to throw up, and not the time he suppressed a rebellion as if he lived for nothing but the screams of his victims.”

“Perfect,” the Professor agrees. “And don’t forget, you’ve been in love with him since you were eight.”

“We’re leaving now,” Felix says and stalks off to their horses. He hears some more fragments of conversation behind him—the Professor’s clear voice, the beast's low grunts of affirmation or refusal—and then the thud of its feet across the cobblestone. Then he has silence as he finishes his work.

Belatedly, he realizes that he shouldn’t have silence. He should have an obnoxious animal trying to prepare for a long ride. Felix half-turns, getting the boar back in his line of sight, only to find him standing a good several feet away from the horse he’s supposed to ride.

“What are you doing?” Felix asks. “Waiting for the horse to admit to being an Imperial spy?”

The beast's gaze snaps over to him, hard and unamused, but it says nothing. Instead, it takes a step closer to the horse and offers its hand in greeting.

And then… the horse backs away.

Felix stares. Horses _never_ do that to Dimitri. 

The boar doesn’t move again. He just stands there, useless and still, shoulder stiff and single eye fixed on his would-be mount. He doesn't even try.

Felix grinds his teeth a moment and then pulls away from his own horse, grabs the reins of the boar’s, and gestures for him to come over. The boar merely studies him, all of Dedue’s old impassiveness with none of his warmth.

Felix grits his teeth. “We don’t have all day. Or do you want to leave murdering the Dukedom soldiers to everyone else when Baron Dominic inevitably attacks Annette?” 

“I _will_ kill them,” the beast mutters, its voice too imploring for the words to be meant for Felix. “This is no diversion, I swear it.”

_Goddess_. It takes everything Felix has not to scream. “_Boar._” 

“_What_,” the boar snaps back, like _Felix_ is the one interrupting. But at least he’s paying attention again.

“The horse. I damn well know you remember how to approach one. Left side, at the shoulder, both hands to its neck. Get moving.”

The boar does not. “Look to its ears,” he says. “It will not permit approach.” 

Felix looks. The ears _are _pinned. The horse doesn’t want the boar near, and apparently the boar himself is so far gone into his wildness that it’s now somehow Felix’s job to change that.

Felix tries not to growl—_someone_ needs to be the human in this circus—and instead returns to his mount and starts digging through the bags. After a moment, he finds what he needs: carrots the Professor had packed away for them as “healthy snacking.” Felix takes out one and tosses it over to the boar. “Here,” he says. “Bribe it. It’s not that hard.”

The scene that comes next is painful. The boar fails to drop the tension from his shoulders that makes him read as a predator to anything with eyes, and the horse trots a few steps back, ears still pinned, a prey animal perfectly aware that it’s in front of a lion.

Felix does not let himself put his face in his own horse’s mane and scream. He is an adult, and he will not do that. But he comes close.

What saves them in the end is that the boar has spent the past two moons brooding in absolute stillness. For a full ten minutes, the boar does not move at _all_. Finally, _finally_, this is enough to persuade the horse to lean forward and take a tentative nibble of the carrot, before fully diving in for the treat. 

Its ears relax. The boar approaches it at the shoulder, raises up his two great paws of hands, and sets them on his horse. 

(Just like Glenn taught them. Felix buries a useless thought back to where it belongs.)

“Fucking finally,” Felix says, and gets back on his mount. “Don’t make me walk you through the rest.”

All he gets for that is another grunt. For all that it has probably been five years since the boar has ridden anything but his own bloodlust down into the Eternal Flames, it looks like horsemanship is ingrained enough that he can settle down and get them moving now that the horse has permitted his presence. And he’s always been a good enough rider that the remaining skittishness should be something he can handle.

As they ride down the winding paths that brings them past Garreg Mach’s half-shattered walls and into the mountainside, Felix doesn’t say anything, and the beast doesn’t either. It’s the kind of silence he would have killed for five years ago, back when the boar wouldn’t keep his distance. Then, the boar would jump at every opportunity to speak with him, eagerly join him in every spar he was offered, take warmly to every group task they were assigned together. No matter how many times Felix pushed him away, Dimitri always came back to try again, acting less like a wild beast than a struck spaniel still smitten with its master.

But now Felix has what he wanted. The beast no longer pretends to be a man. It no longer jumps for attention and affection from him in any way it can get it. Everyone knows it for what it is. And on the long ride down into Magred Way, it doesn’t try to say a word.

After night comes in the forest and they make camp, the corpse lingers at the edge of the space where a living man sleeps and keeps itself alert and awake. It does not pace; it knows that will only wake the living. Instead, it searches the dark of the forest with its single eye and listens for any noise or absence of noise that should not be.

This, for the corpse, is a difficult task. Wherever it goes, after all, there is always an abundance of sight and sound. Its afterlife has not been one of silences.

Glenn curls his hands around its wrists. It feels the heat of his body run through it, charred and wet and smoking. Glenn always sharpens that acrid scent it has never been able to get out of its throat, a bitterness that has flattened all sense of taste since. “Don’t bother. You’ll get him killed like you do everyone else. A dog makes a good guardian, but a boar doesn’t.”

Its lips feel dry. It wets them with its tongue and swallows, keeping its voice low in its throat. “I know.”

Whenever its stepmother speaks, it feels like a whisper, like ash in the wind. Her voice always comes as if it is fading away. “You can’t be distracted. While you tarry here indulging the living, my monstrous daughter adds more to the dead.”

“I must do this.” Its insistences sound weak to its own ears. Why must it do this? It tries to remember the reasons. It cannot be love for the living, it threw that away with all but its duty to the dead. So it must be—what? “They… They add strength to our ranks. Gilbert and Annette.” The names spark sensations at the edges of his thoughts—a gloved hand guiding his with a sword, warm fingers shoving a bound book into his hands.

No. Not his hands. _Its_. It is a corpse, not a boy or a prince. A beast, at best. There is no warmth and comfort for wild animals or the dead.

“You swore to avenge us, Dimitri.” Its father. The corpse can never look at its father. It knows what it will see and it cannot bear it anymore. But there is no shutting away what its father says. “You have no right to distraction or comfort while our killers live.”

“Are you waiting for more people to die?” asks Glenn. “You really are a beast craving blood. Even my brother's.”

“Glenn, please—” 

“You _do_ want it, don’t you? You want him dead. You want him to join us so he'll be trapped with you as we are.” 

“I do not, I swear it, I have no desire but to give you rest—” 

“You can’t lie to the dead, beast,” Glenn hisses. “We know you for what you are.” 

The beast does not curl its hands around its ears. It cannot close its eye. It is on watch, and it knows that. But all it can hear are voices and all it can see are flames. Recovering the stolen cloak that is all it has of its father’s colors, it wraps itself in the heraldry of its family as if that would offer proof of its allegiance to the dead. 

“Please,” it begs the darkness, as quiet as a beast can be. “Please, I’m sorry, please—” 

“Disgusting,” Glenn reminds him. 

A dog makes a good guardian, but a boar does not. And this dead man cannot manage to be even that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time: He is NOT Ferdinand von Aegir, the important questions about horse ghosts, and muffled Hozier playing in the distance.
> 
> I exist on twitter @ [marezafic](https://twitter.com/marezafic)!


	2. one

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dimitri and Felix discover the joys of road trips, customs officers, and opera fans.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: As before, dehumanization, depictions of war and the horrors thereof, bad mental health all around. More instances of Dimitri's not-so-subtle suicidality in this one. Roughhousing and injuries. Also, lies and manipulations! It's a fake married fic after all.

For this, their first journey of its kind, their biggest problems are hit on the road.

Fragments of conversation disturbed Felix’s sleep last night. Desperate murmurs, plaintive cries. A name that always hits like blade against bone. So he knows the boar hasn’t slept. And he knows, too, that when the boar has not slept, the boar holds conversations with people who are not there.

The boar mutters to his ghosts as they pack up camp; he addresses them as they get back on the (badly maintained) road. He avoids looking at Felix but holds forth in murmurs to the dead without end. Eventually, Felix can’t help but let out, “Don’t tell me the dead are on horseback now.” 

The boar snaps up. “_What_?” But as loud and harsh as it is, Felix can see the confusion in it, like that of a man pulled out of a nightmare.

“Your _ghosts_. The ones you devote your time to over those of us still breathing. We’re at a decent enough pace that they can’t be walking next to you. So how are you imagining it in that crazed mind of yours? Are they on horseback with us?”

The boar’s breath, which was not even before, becomes more ragged as his focus returns to Felix. Felix doesn’t care. At least he’s here now.

Felix makes the extremely well-reasoned decision to try to keep Dimitri with him.

“You fought mounted when we left you in Fhirdiad,” Felix says. “That stallion my father gave you for your fifteenth birthday, as I remember. I have to assume you lost it to Cornelia along with everything else. Does it count as one of the ghosts telling you to slaughter your way through thousands for revenge, or do you only invent human excuses for your atrocities?”

“You mock the dead.” The low growl bears traces of the same wrath Felix hears whenever one of them suggests that racing off to die fighting Edelgard would be a mistake.

“The dead don’t care. They’re _gone._”

“They are _not!_” The roar comes so loud that the boar’s horse turns skittish, cantering to the side as if it has only just remembered it has a lion on its back. “They are _here_, Felix. I hear them, all of them. I hear _Glenn_—” _a blade against bone_ “—and he is miserable for every day he goes unavenged. He suffers without end! Do you want that for him?”

“Glenn. Isn’t. Suffering.”

(A sword and plate mail. Dimitri’s voice, wavering as it calls the wrong name. _He died like a true knight._) 

Willing Dimitri to finally get it, Felix hisses, “Glenn is _dead_.” 

But the beast doesn’t listen. It _never_ listens. 

“He has waited nigh on ten years for this,” it says, its voice low and ragged, _miserable_ on its own lacerations. “I have made him wait, failed to bring him peace. I have failed them all. But I will fail them no longer.” 

“‘Fail them.’ As if Glenn wouldn’t loathe the monster you are now.” 

There’s a laugh, ugly and bitter, that makes Felix long for the stilted chuckles that made his blood roil five years ago. “Even so,” the beast says. “He must be given rest.” 

Then the boar tugs on his reins, guiding its horse into a turn.

“This is a waste of time,” says it. “I must return to the monastery and gather myself for the march on Enbarr.”

No. No fucking way. 

“Oh, no you don’t, you damned animal—”

Felix knows how to handle horses. This is because, while Felix may prefer to fight as infantry, he is the son of a Duke, and he has been raised to fill his office. As such, Felix knows that there are several things you shouldn’t do on horseback, not without a great deal of practice, and especially not when one of the horses is extremely skittish. Among these things you should not do is leaping across your saddle to tackle someone while they try to turn their horse around. 

Not for the first time, Dimitri makes Felix completely forget what he knows.

The boar’s horse canters to the side and Felix’s steps to the other—Felix throws his weight forward to try balance while the boar attempts to bring his horse to heel. Dimitri has always been a good rider, but he has probably never tried to calm a skittish horse with another man half on top of him, and Felix feels the shift and _knows_ the horse is rearing before it’s happening. They fall together, Felix under Dimitri, and Felix’s final thought before darkness takes him is that it’s so fucking unfair that Dimitri managed to get taller on a diet of nothing but dead rats and weeds.

Warmth. 

That feeling reaches him even before the dull ache in his head. It’s hearthfire warmth, the warmth of winter nights with a wolf’s pelt and four other bodies huddled against his. The warmth presses into his back and around his shoulders like that old pelt, a ward against the unforgiving cold of his home. But the warmth is moving, too, jostling him at a steady rhythm. Every bump sends a new spike of pain through his skull and his chest.

“I swear it, father.” Dimitri breathes the words just beside his left ear. “This is not a distraction. We must have more strength.”

He sounds so desperate. So plaintive and afraid. Felix has never been the braver of them, but he wants to find the thing that’s making him feel like this and strike it down, like his father would for Dimitri’s, like Kyphon would for Loog.

“I will, I will. Please,” comes Dimitri’s voice now, wavering on the edge of tears. “Please, leave me in peace just for now. I swear, this is all in aid of our mission.”

It isn’t right. It isn’t _right_. No one should ever make Dimitri feel that way.

“No! No, I just… I only need him for our fighting power. Do not mock, Glenn, I…” 

Felix’s eyes open.

Felix growls, “_Boar_,” and feels the arms around him tense. He recognizes the horse before him as his borrowed piebald mare, which means the boar dragged him back onto his own saddle while he was out. 

The boar’s horse is nowhere to be seen. 

“What happened to your horse?” It’s hard to keep the pain out of his voice. Felix tries anyway.

“It ran.”

Felix snorts. He wants to turn to glare at the boar, but doing so like this would be stupid, so he settles for expressing his irritation to the point between his horse’s ears. “As if you couldn’t chase it down. I’ve seen you tear across a battlefield at pace with Sylvain and Ingrid thanks to that March Ring the Professor gave you.”

No reply.

“If we’re heading back to the monastery—”

“We are not.”

“What, the dead deigned to permit you to help Annette?”

No reply, again. Felix tries to turn, but one hand drops from the reins and grips him tight to keep him still. That damned brute strength of his makes it impossible to fight. 

“You hit your head. Be still until we reach town and find a healer.”

“I’m fine.”

“Do not waste my time with arguments,” the boar intones, which makes Felix scoff.

“_Waste your time_. While we’re stuck on a trip neither of us can speed up, because we’re short one horse. Incredible, boar. Your reasoning skills truly astound.”

His only response is an irritated growl and a shift of the arms around him. It makes Felix very aware of two things: first, that he needs to get himself out of this damned beast’s arms, and second, that he absolutely can’t, because there’s nowhere else he can be.

So Felix tries anyway.

He pushes himself upright to a throb of something awful down his ribs and something worse up his left leg, and immediately, the boar’s arm locks in across his chest, keeping him thoroughly pinned in place. Felix’s face burns with what is absolutely anger and definitely not humiliation. 

“I said,” growls the beast in his ear, “_be still._”

The boar is right. Felix knows the boar is right. This doesn’t stop Felix from goading, “Why? Are you going to _cut me down_ if I slow the journey?”

Years ago, this would have led to a quiet protest. Something imploring and sad, disgustingly earnest in a way that made Felix’s stomach flip. Then the boar would try an argument with logic, reminding Felix that their allies need them in fit condition, that if he doesn’t want to do it for Dimitri’s peace of mind then he could at least do it to stay strong on the battlefield. Felix would insist he back off, and the boar would obey in the manner of a dog with its tail between his legs, and within a half an hour Felix would be confronted with Sylvain or Ingrid or, Goddess help him, Ashe or Mercedes, messengers insisting on his good behavior. 

And now. 

Nothing but a grunt, neither confirmation and denial, and an arm tightening around his chest. It sends a twinge through his ribs and he snaps, “Watch it, boar,” unhappily aware of the high note of pain that undermines his bite. A moment passes, and then the arm loosens. Just a fraction. 

When Felix shifts his leg again, he realizes he can feel the hard pressure of splint running along his shin.

Felix shuts his eyes and grits his teeth, and neither of them speak for hours.

With the Dukedom taxed ruthlessly and most of its lords occupied with fighting, very few roads not key to troop movements are in good repair. It’s not much better in the loyalist territories, Felix can admit—probably worse, with their limited resources. The road out of Magdred Way that the Professor picked for them is barely passable, half-consumed by the forest since the monastery was last in use. Several times, the boar has to dismount to clear away bushes or shove a fallen tree out of their path.

Felix decides to do the same. After the first two times he nearly collapses from trying to dismount, the boar growls in his face and threatens to tie him to the saddle to keep him from wasting their time.

Felix tries a third time. 

They stare at each other, the boar inscrutable and Felix pretending his leg isn’t about to give out on him. Then the boar leaves him where he stands to shove away the rotted tree before them. Felix keeps one hand firm on the saddle the entire time, muscles so tensed they seem to multiply the pain, and refuses to count himself lucky that the boar's abominable strength makes him so quick at this. 

When the boar finishes, Felix mounts again, and the boar takes hold of the reins with a murmur about how they’re losing time anyway so he may as well walk to avoid tiring the horse. It takes them the rest of the day to break out of the forest and reach the better-maintained central thoroughfare of the Gaspard region.

Felix scans his eyes along the mud and dirt. It becomes clear very quickly that Yuri and Richard Lowell aren’t the only ones wary of the war heating up once again. 

Wagons with livestock and children, folks with nothing but a sack over their shoulders, or not even that. Families walking together, the oldest carrying the youngest as long as they can. Others who walk alone. And the usual markers of what they’ve been through: exhaustion and stubbornness, gauntness and missing limbs.

Felix uses the height of horseback to get a look over the congestion on the road. “Checkpoint ahead,” he says. “Dukedom soldiers.” He glances over at the boar guiding the horse beside him, with his mess of hair hiding his bad eye. Like this, without royal cloak or spear, the boar doesn’t look so large and threatening. The hunch of his shoulders cuts away his extra height, and even the boar looks a little worn out after moving that much shrubbery.

“I understand,” the boar murmurs.

“Do you?” There’s a surliness in the boar’s expression that Felix can’t trust. “Because we’re not getting past a checkpoint if you _kill_ them.”

The boar huffs, moving a fraction closer to him. “I _understand_.” He clenches his teeth, like a beast that would bare them to an enemy. “Treacherous dogs may be left for after their masters are made to pay.”

This, Felix decides in the face of a sudden compulsion to throw himself off his horse, will have to be good enough. Even so, he can’t help but scoff, “And what about boars?”

“They," the boar says, "may be slaughtered when their work is done.”

Felix’s headache screams.

As the boar guides them into the masses of the dispossessed, Felix braces himself with the saddle horn, trying to fight off weariness. Even spared foot travel, riding is hard work, and they haven’t been taking enough breaks.

He is not the only one on the edge of falling, either. There’s a way the boar’s behavior changes, right before he collapses into what passes for his version of sleep. His weight falls more and more on the nearest thing—in this case, the shoulder of their horse—and his eye blinks slowly shut before quickly flicking open. His murmurs to the dead become both more obvious and more quietly given.

“It’s idiotic and reckless,” Felix says.

The boar’s eye opens. Along the line of their horse’s neck, he looks up at Felix. Felix isn’t sure why he’s saying it, but now that he is, he doesn’t see any point in stopping.

“The way you sleep. You exhaust yourself to collapse. You won’t be able to wake up for an enemy attack doing that.”

The boar blinks at him, once. “I have no need for your advice,” he tells Felix. The way he runs a hand through his hair and forces himself to straighten up is so dizzyingly familiar that Felix doesn’t think before he digs into the packs for a water canteen to shove into Dimitri’s hands. The boar stares at him.

“Drink,” Felix orders. “It’ll keep you awake.”

Not that it would be bad if the boar were comatose through the checkpoint. But Felix doesn’t want to see what happens when they talk to a Dukedom soldier while he’s half between the bitterness of waking and the violence of his dreams.

The boar growls, “I’m fine,” and pushes away from their horse. But of course it’s too hard, and the horse has to step to the side to keep upright and huffs at them in protest, and Dimitri stumbles too, idiot that he is, and then—

“What’s the trouble back there?”

These days, the boar freezes like a lion scenting blood. His head turns forward, past a multi-generational wagon, a young couple, three chickens, and two very thin goats. 

Royal blue and plate mail is coming their way.

Felix tries to reach for the boar but his ribs remind him why he can’t. So he hisses, quiet as he can, “_I’ll talk to them._” The boar draws in closer to him, his hands turning into fists, but he doesn’t argue.

The Dukedom soldier stops before them with bright eyes and an assessing attitude. Other refugees draw away from them on instinct. Felix calculates the distance from here to the checkpoint (five yards), the number of soldiers (four), how easy it would be to break past them (very), how hard it would be to keep moving after they called the alarm (incredibly). He glances back at the boar, who is still perfectly still by him, half-hiding behind the horse but watching the soldier with one sharp eye. 

The soldier studies them, and Felix realizes he has made one mistake: he forgot that he has to pretend to be married to Dimitri. 

What does that even look like? Shit.

Before Felix can come up with an answer to this, the boar mumbles, “I stumbled.” His voice is low and tired, hoarse but not threatening. His single eye is focused completely on the soldier. “My apologies.”

The soldier frowns. “Are you sick?” which is not the best thing for them to be suspected of, because there’s no way they’re moving anywhere if they’re presumed to carry disease.

“Only tired,” the boar answers. Then, without even glancing towards Felix, he continues in that exhausted, scraped-out voice of his, “Rebels harried our departure. Though we were able to keep our lives, my husband was hurt in our flight, and we have had little opportunity for rest.”

That.

Is not true.

Dimitri is saying things that aren’t true. 

_Dimitri_ is _saying things that aren’t true_. Things he made up _on the spot_.

What the _fuck_. 

“Injured?” The soldier glances over to Felix, and Felix draws back on reflex, wincing as the movement pushes him too far.

“A broken leg,” the boar answers for him. “I suspect his chest as well, but he has not admitted as much.” 

“My chest is fine,” Felix says.

“How badly does it hurt?” the soldier asks.

“It’s _fine_,” Felix insists.

“It is _not_,” the boar growls. “But we will see to it at the next town.”

“The next town is a bit away,” the soldier says, clear concern on his face. “How much money were you able to bring away?”

Before Felix can say they have enough (and they do, the Professor made sure of that), the boar answers, “Little. But it is no matter. If we must trade Celica for Yuri’s sake, then so be it. My husband comes first.”

_Who the fuck is Celica_.

“So your name is Celica, huh, big girl?” says the soldier with a smile, patting the horse’s muzzle. “Let’s see if we can avoid you three having to part. I’ll go see if our healer still has anything left in her.”

“You’re very kind,” comes the low rumble of the beast’s voice, its head bowed low. Then the soldier steps away.

Felix stares at someone who was once Dimitri. But the boar only draws closer to the horse, threading fingers through the mane. There’s something wrong in how it moves—a tremble in its hands, a tightness in the body. Felix can hear the edge of a whisper, the beast’s promises to its fellow dead.

He hears, “Please. Only a little patience. Please…” 

The soldier returns with a healer, but the beast doesn’t raise from its place. Its fingers still quiver in the mane of their horse.

The healer looks to Felix and says, “I was told you were injured. Is your husband hurt as well?”

“I—I am fine.” The beast’s breathing comes out unsteady, its head rising slow, the mess of its hair hiding its eyes. “Worry not for me.”

“If you are hurt,” the healer begins, reaching out a hand. _No_, Felix thinks, _they can’t touch him_—

“He’s fine,” Felix blurts out. “The sickness is—” Fuck. “It isn’t his body that’s sick.”

Soldier and healer exchange a glance and give them space once more, leaving the beast its wary stance at the edge of this misshapen circle they’ve formed.

“I apologize,” the beast murmurs through gritted teeth, head still low, body still curved. The closer Felix watches, the closer he sees it: the rage is there, but it’s being held down. Like an animal pinned in place by a hand on its neck, trembling in desperate longing for breath and for blood.

The healer smiles in a way that’s so like Mercedes that it almost dizzies Felix. Or maybe that’s the concussion. “It’s alright. It is common enough now. But if I may heal your husband?”

The boar nods, and the healer comes over to Felix’s side. “I’ll just be a moment,” she says. With the touch of her faith, the break in his leg pulls together, coming along weeks in its recovery; much of his dizziness and the pain in his ribs fade away. “I’m afraid I can’t fix everything,” she tells him, “But that should help. It’s better if you wait a little longer before you walk anywhere.” 

Felix mutters a reflexive apology for the trouble, but he’s still watching the beast. It doesn’t attack, but it’s clearly off in its head. Felix can’t trust that.

He lets out a breath of air. “Boar,” he calls to bring it back, and the boar raises its head in answer.

This is when Felix realizes that the soldier and healer are both staring at him.

“…It’s a pet name,” he says.

The healer says, “Oh, my.”

The soldier says, “Why don’t we get you two through the checkpoint? We have word of a battalion of Imperial soldiers who will be coming through to escort everyone safely to Dominic. They’ll see to it you get to your destination without any further trouble.”

“Great,” Felix says.

The checkpoint is easy. It’s unacceptably easy. The boar is overtly erratic, they have the goddamned Blaiddyd cloak in their pack, and they just—get through the checkpoint, just like that. The healer and soldier wave them off with sympathetic expressions without even pressing them for further details and without checking any of their things, making some quiet comment about not crowding Felix’s dear husband. Felix and Dimitri have successfully lied their way through a Dukedom checkpoint.

The beast has _manipulated_ their way through it.

“What you did there—” Felix starts, then stops himself. It seems he didn't need to; the boar is, for once, willing to answer.

“I had no access to healers, nor were vulneraries easy to come by,” it tells him. “Imperial soldiers, however, are well-supplied, and much easier to slaughter if they can be persuaded to give their resources to an injured traveler first.”

Felix doesn't stop. The horse is being pulled along by the beast's hand. But for one long moment, thinking is simply impossible.

The beast trudges on in silence beside him, its hands still on the horse’s reins. It still looks close to collapse. But like a creature suddenly allowed to breathe again, the beast does not falter or flag.

The town is a muddy, derelict place. The second they arrive, Felix throws himself out of the saddle.

This is a mistake. 

“Alright,” Felix says. “We need to get the horse watered and brushed down. Can you handle that, or will I have to tackle it along with trading us a new mount?”

The boar doesn’t reply, which Felix is used to at this point, but it still pisses him off when this is at least the kind of pragmatic question he can usually get an answer to. Felix turns, about to ask again, when he catches the look in its eye. 

The beast is very still and very quiet. Its shoulders are set tight, fingers curling in that familiar gesture that means it wants a lance. It looks _choked _again.

This is when Felix notices Ferdinand von Aegir and his battalion, disgused in the armor of Imperial soldiers.

Felix grabs the boar’s arm on instinct. Tension snaps back at him through it, tight as a well-strung bow, breathing scraped, body set for violence. There’s a set to the beast’s eye, like it would screw it shut if it could but it's too caught in—in what? 

The eye finds Felix’s, and Felix has no idea. He has _no idea_ what the boar is capable of anymore.

The boar’s hands twitch again. Felix is closest to the horse, the bags, and the weapons. That would be a lot more comforting if he didn’t know what the boar can do with his bare hands.

“Unhand me,” the boar says.

“Not until I can be sure you’ll behave yourself.”

“You forget, Felix,” the beast murmurs, low in his ear. “Boars are meant to be hunted, not tamed. If you disapprove of how I act, then you will have to kill me yourself.”

Felix stops breathing. His grip on the boar tightens and the boar _still_ doesn’t fight back, even though Felix knows his grip is bruising, even though Felix can _feel_ the violent potential held against him. Felix can’t think enough to form an argument. He doesn’t remember what they’re even arguing _about_, he just knows that he wants to draw his sword, throw himself on Dimitri, make him _never talk like that again_—

(Later, Felix will remember domesticated pigs exist and realize neither he nor the boar know anything about farming.)

Then Ferdinand von fucking Aegir decides to come over and say hello.

“I am Lloyd von Lanvaldear,” Ferdinand says, at the level of volume and emotion generally seen on opera stages. “What seems to be the trouble here?”

Felix knows that Ferdinand is trying to help. Felix knows that Ferdinand has never done anything he thought was unhelpful in his entire life. Felix also knows, despite himself, that Ferdinand likes the opera. Felix did not realize these two facts together would come together on this day to make him half want to support the boar’s possible murderous impulses.

“Nothing,” Felix says. “Go away.” 

The beast echoes his command with a growled, “_Out of my sight_.”

“It is my obligation as a commander of the Empire to quell trouble where I see it,” Ferdinand continues, still like a man readying for his aria. “And there is certainly trouble here.”

“There isn’t,” says Felix. The boar’s teeth snap shut.

Ferdinand frowns as he looks between them. Something seems to click, and he takes a step back. “I see,” Ferdinand continues. “You are the couple that had some trouble at the checkpoint. Am I correct?”

Correction: The boar is not going to murder Ferdinand. Ferdinand is going to murder Felix.

Through gritted teeth, Felix says, “Yes.”

“Right.” Ferdinand's eyes flicker over them again—Felix catches the sincere worry behind his operatic mask as he looks at the boar—and then something seems to click, because he says, “I... understand. It is my own presence that has escalated your strife. You have a grudge against Imperial soldiers because… because...” 

Felix steadies himself and starts sorting through a strategy for getting them out of here: get to the horse, get their packs open, get Dimitri a lance because he is a beast and a monster and Felix doesn’t care about him anymore but he can’t die here, he _can’t_—

“…because,” Ferdinand says, catching Bernadetta’s eye, “your husband had an affair with an Imperial knight.”

Bernadetta gives Ferdinand a thumbs up. 

“_What,_” Felix says. 

“Or partner? I do not know of your marital status,” Ferdinand says, glancing at Bernadetta again for cues. “But it is a common problem where Imperial soldiers march. We men of Adrestia are very handsome of face, as you can see. It is hard for any to resist our good looks, even such a clearly loving husband as your own.”

“‘Clearly loving.’”

“It is tragic how these things happen in wartime,” Ferdinand continues, as Bernadetta's gestures escalate in intricacy. “Lovers are parted and believe each other dead. They seek solace in strangers, only to rediscover their lost loves with both joy and grief in their hearts. Joy at the reunion, of course, but grief at the fracturing of their relationship that has happened since.” 

“_‘Clearly loving.’_”

“Such rifts can be healed, however, if there is a will for it,” Ferdinand barrels on with the enthusiasm of a rampaging warhorse, or worse, a spaniel who has seen its master after a long separation. “I must ask: do you truly love each other and wish to repair your relationship?”

Felix’s wish, in this moment, is for Ferdinand to understand how dead Felix wants him. Ferdinand, who apparently has never wanted anything in his life but to make Felix suffer, smiles warmly at them both.

With the passion of a dead fish, the boar says, “…Yes.”

Felix literally cannot stop himself from shoving his face into the boar's shoulder. He just can’t. When he bites into it to get himself not to scream, he gets a mouth full of rough wool and absolutely no response.

“That is a truly heartwarming proclamation,” declares Ferdinand from somewhere vaguely, unforgivably nearby. “Broken trust can be healed with time and open communication. I believe a conversation about your troubles, counseled by myself or my ally here, Elize von Capel, would be the best thing for you.”

“_Shut up_.” 

Felix shoves off the boar. Ferdinand takes a step back as Felix points a finger in his face.

“Don’t you fucking _start_ on my relationship with the boar. It’s my fucking business, and you’re the last person I want meddling. Understand?”

The boar looks at Ferdinand. Ferdinand looks at the boar.

“Husband,” the boar says, the word shaped like a knife. “Mind your tongue.”

Felix doesn’t hit the boar. He does spin on his heel and stomp away. He stomps all the way to the edge of town before realizing he left behind the boar, the horse, and their weapons. Which means he, his still-there concussion, and his half-healed leg have to walk all the way back. 

“Fuck you,” Felix says to no one in particular, but the sentiment stands.

Returning to the muddy town center presents him with the sight of no bloody massacres. There’s just his horse, brushed down and clearly watered and fed, with the packs at its side, and absolutely no sign of where the boar might be. 

Sadly, the same cannot be said for Lloyd von Lanvaldear.

“Hail, F—ah—” Ferdinand freezes with his mouth open and a hand in the air. Felix decides that they are _never_ letting Ferdinand act again.

“Yuri,” he supplies.

“Yuri!” Ferdinand answers, his enthusiasm spurting back up like blood from a sliced carotid. “I imagine you are looking for your husband to reconcile with him?”

Miraculously, Felix’s jaw has just clenched back up all on its own. Felix manages to get exactly one word past its bold attempt at saving him from his life: “Yes.”

“You will find him in the chapel,” continues Ferdinand. “I believe he is repenting the resentment he holds for you and praying for your happy reconciliation.” 

Ferdinand smiles at Felix, warm and friendly. Felix fantasizes about hitting him with the hilt of his sword. But even in his fantasies, Ferdinand will not stop cheerfully explaining more about this grand romantic opera he and Bernadetta have added to their bullshit cover stories, and then he tells Felix to kiss and make up with Dimitri, and then Dimitri calls him _my beloved_ in a low, throaty voice and pulls Felix into his arms—

Felix revises the fantasy: he wants to hit Ferdinand with the pointy end of his sword.

“Great,” Felix says. But, because Ferdinand is an ally, he forces himself to focus, dropping his voice so they’re not overheard. “How did you even manage to pull this off? Isn’t there a real Imperial battalion coming?”

This washes the cheer from Ferdinand as none of Felix’s other words have. “There is not,” he answers. “Cornelia does not, it seems, see the aid of refugees as a fit use for the soldiers given to her by Edelgard. But the Dukedom soldiers are already overburdened, so they did not think too much of it when a message came to them with an Imperial seal.”

For the second time today, Felix realizes that he is ranking second in deception to a goddamned spaniel of a human being.

Ferdinand’s voice softens, dropping out of its theatrical range. “We have already taken care of our horses and supplies, and the other refugees are ready to move, so I will move my people out now to get ahead of you both. We may be a little delayed reaching Dominic, but I cannot now leave them.” 

It’s tactically stupid. But it’s also exactly what Felix would expect Ferdinand to do. “The Professor will understand,” he says.

There’s a brief, wavering smile, before Ferdinand continues. “As I cannot check on Dimitri… Please give him my apologies. I think, even knowing it was me, it was difficult for him to see that armor.”

The note in Ferdinand’s voice rings dissonant as a scraped chalkboard in Felix’s ears. Felix studies the man, who he has never known well, and tries to find the familiarity of violence in his tone. “He wanted to kill you,” he tells Ferdinand.

(So did Felix, to be fair. But differently.)

“Perhaps, but I don’t think so.” Ferdinand’s eyes turn outward—to the quiet village that has been trampled over by their soldiers, no matter how careful they have tried to be, and which will no doubt be stomped upon by others in the future. To the collateral damage of war, some listless, some determined, all scarred outside and in. “I believe, rather, that he wanted very much not to.”

“You’re an idiot.”

“I do not think I am,” Ferdinand answers. “But I would rather be a fool and offer him my hand than be cunning and wonder if I had left him in the dark.” 

Ferdinand’s smile, Felix realizes, is essentially the same smile that it was five years ago. Changed by the war, obviously. None of them has avoided that. But despite the murder of his father, and his exile from the birthright that shaped his entire identity, and his years of vagrancy and destitution—despite the blunt, firm rationality he demonstrates at private meetings between their classmates when he opines that Dimitri is an unfit leader as he is, and that they must prioritize Byleth's commands—that smile is the same. Ferdinand came to them a spaniel, and even now, a spaniel is what he has remained.

Felix feels strangely sick at the idea of it.

“Get your battalion out of here in the next ten minutes,” Felix tells him. “I’ll handle the boar.” 

Like most chapels in towns like these, the building is compact, its dedications to the Goddess as simple as candles and an altar. It’s clean, suggesting that people have been through it recently enough, but Felix can spot no suggestion of the recent presence of a priest. The candles are burned out. The altar looks like it’s been looted.

Felix has never been religious. It’s the knowing _why_ that raises the hair at the back of his neck.

Leaving their horse at the entrance, Felix steps further into this dimly lit refuge, blinking to help his eyes adjust. “Boar,” he calls into the darkness.

Left, beyond one of the frontmost pews, a figure rises. It says nothing, but Felix has spent too long watching the boar not to know the way it moves now, so he barely tenses up as it approaches. Soon, it’s close enough that Felix can make out the mess of its hair, the outline of its jaw. 

An arm shoves out towards him. Felix’s hands come up on instinct: something curved and glassy presses into them. With a step back, he realizes he’s been handed a vulnerary. 

Felix tries to find an eye in the dark. “I don’t want it.”

“Stop wasting time. You need to heal.”

“I don’t know where you _got_ it.”

The silhouette cants its head as if studying him. No—no, _Dimitri_ would study him. This thing would only mock. The thing says, “It doesn’t matter.”

“_Yes it does_,” Felix snaps back, even though he knows it doesn’t, even though they’ve all done what they had to to survive. “Where did you _get_ it.”

The beast steps forward. Its eye is sharp. Its gaze is cold. “Why?”

“Because I asked you, you damned beast. Did you trick someone out of this? Or did you kill for it?”

“This is a waste of time,” the beast pronounces and steps past him towards the door.

Felix catches his arm, and all at once they’re a fucking tableau in a stupid fucking play: the boar walking in one direction and Felix in the other, neither facing the other, but Felix can’t let go of him, _he can’t_, and now neither of them can move. The beast _feels_ angry, but it doesn’t turn around. It doesn’t attack.

Felix wants to laugh.

“I can’t tell anymore, you know that?” Felix has no idea what he’s saying. He wants to make himself shut up, but that feels as impossible as letting go. “Five years ago, I knew you for a beast, a wild animal. And before that, back when you were human, I knew you for my friend. Now? Now, I have no damned clue. You certainly aren’t Dimitri, but what you’ve become now—” 

He breaks off. Is something wrong with his breathing? No. _Fuck_ no. The boar doesn’t have that kind of power over him. He won’t _let_ it have that.

“I don’t care what you are,” Felix says, and even he knows that no one here is buying it. “But you’re too unpredictable to let out on your own.” 

The boar, still unmoving, exhales a breath like a death rattle. Its head is angled away, towards the old chapel doors. “I am but a walking corpse. Ask nothing else of me. I have nothing else to offer you.”

Sharp and short, Felix laughs. “I won’t. I ask only that you keep your rotting mind coherent enough for us to win this war.”

“That,” the boar answers, “is what I intend. Do as you please when it’s over.”

It’s settled. It’s enough. Felix doesn’t need to, doesn’t _want_ to say anything else. The beast releases a low noise, mockery or displeasure, and yanks its arm free of Felix’s hold.

Felix says, “Ferdinand wanted me to pass on his apologies.”

The beast stops.

Half in shadow, half in light, the boar’s stare is wide, open. For a moment, for just one moment, Felix thinks he can see him—_Dimitri_—

The boar’s hands curl into fists, and like a wilful boy cursed for bad manners, he transforms in an instant back into a beast. “I have no interest in his apologies,” he intones. “I have less in your conversation. You have the money. Get us a second horse.”

The boar leaves.

Felix stands there. He counts himself down through all the places the human body is most vulnerable to death, and then sets off to get them what they need to finish this mission.

Four days later, they get the signal that Baron Dominic has responded with hostility. Felix doesn’t bother expressing his lack of shock. He grabs his shield and his sword from the convoy and doesn’t look at the boar holding a spear as if it were his only salvation. The Professor positions Felix beside the boar in battle, knowing they won’t need to tell him to keep Dimitri from getting himself killed, and they all get sent to slaughter Faerghus’s soldiers as fast as they can so Seteth and Ingrid can get a clear flight path to Gilbert and Annette. 

“Hunt them like beasts!” he hears to his left, as the would-be King of Faerghus slaughters his would-be people. Felix raises his shield and blocks an arrow meant for Dimitri’s back as the beast rushes forward into bloodlust, and blood and viscera spatter all over them both.

_What a waste of bathwater,_ Felix thinks.

They win. They get a Relic for it. On the return, they find the checkpoint gone, its soldiers forced to scramble back to Dominic to defend against a threat already slipping away. So Felix rides back to Garreg Mach with the boar in the same silence as they rode out in, and when they arrive home, the boar immediately returns to his cathedral haunt.

After, with the Professor, Felix says, “That stupid cover story of yours was pointless.”

The Professor answers, “Ferdinand tells me he used it to stop a fight between you two. He says that it shocked Dimitri back to his senses and distracted you from arguing with him.”

Felix bites the inside of his cheek, counts off the top three most accessible arteries in standard Imperial armor, and tells the Professor, “You better have learned your lesson about taking us into Empire and Dukedom territory.” 

Later, Felix remembers the horse that got away from them and thinks, _Lucky bastard_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time: probably either Dalen and Oliver or Zelos and Colette!


	3. three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The teachings of Jiddu Krishnamurti, misplaced paternal affection, and more knights than Felix signed on for.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: The usual warnings (dehumanization, warfare, Dimitri's passive suicidality) persist. In addition, a character will be introduced and then killed. There isn’t any graphic violence, minus a very brief line or two, but it is also explicitly on-screen and not nice, so be mindful! Also, Dimitri’s current lack of table manners kind of grossed me out to write. It's brief, but you may not want to read that while eating.

The Professor has not learned their lesson about taking missions in Dukedom and Empire territory.

“Why are we routing bandits along the Airmid River?” Felix asks after watching the Professor map out battles that seem to cross the entirety of Fódlan in a weekend. “We have more than enough enemies to deal with without looking for extra fights.”

The Professor looks at him, blinks once, and says, “We need the money.”

Gilbert nods in agreement and thanks the Professor for delivering to him exactly two Noa fruits and a carrot. 

So. They keep having to go into enemy territory. And they keep having to have a feasible cover. And the Professor keeps asking Felix to accompany the boar, and Felix keeps saying he doesn’t want to, and then the Professor suggests Annette or Ashe or, Goddess help them, Raphael, and then he has to travel for days with the boar, horses that don’t like the boar, and no other company.

Felix can (but won’t) admit that it isn’t as bad as it could be. The boar is antisocial and irritable, but he’s contained, and the Professor has gotten better at charting routes that avoid checkpoints, which limits how often they have to use their cover story. Felix’s main job is making sure that the boar is relatively functional when they arrive for a battle and actually returns to the monastery afterwards, both of which the boar begrudgingly goes along with for the sake of his revenge. It’s an unpleasant task, but a tolerable one, like cleaning out the stables or listening to Sylvain talk about women.

But that is before Felix’s old man joins up with them. 

“These disguises are an effective choice, given our situation,” Rodrigue says one war council after listening to the Professor’s explanation of how they smuggle their troops across enemy lines. “Yet how have you managed to bring Prince Dimitri so often into Dukedom and Empire territory? I cannot help but feel His Highness’s bearing and manner are too distinct for the tricks you’ve described.”

“That’s funny,” Mercedes says. “Felix said essentially the same thing.”

“He did, didn’t he?” says Dorothea, chin in hand. “The apple really doesn’t fall far from the tree. It makes you wonder.”

Raphael asks, “Wonder about what?”

“Felix has done well discharging his duty to the crown,” Gilbert says. “I admit, I had some initial reservations about the idea, but your son has performed his task admirably, Your Grace.”

“I’d be interested to hear what this task has been,” Rodrigue says, right as Felix gets to his feet.

“This is a waste of time. I’ll be in the training grounds if something of actual relevance comes up.” 

No one tries to stop him, but Sylvain’s laughter follows him out the door. That afternoon, the Professor comes to him with a map of his route to Lake Teutates.

The boar has the rage of an animal but completely lacks an animal’s sense of self-preservation. This is more than a little annoying when, inevitably, he gets himself impaled fighting, and all of Faerghus’s most dedicated knights rush to his side to attend to a prince determined to lose his own head before a crown can be put on it.

“Enough,” the boar says, attempting and failing to stand. “It is a minor wound. I do not require your assistance.”

“It will be difficult to travel with your injuries,” Gilbert says, frowning at the bloodied and twisted armor at the boar’s abdomen. “I shall accompany you back to the monastery, Your Highness.”

“Absolutely not,” Felix snaps, at the same time as his old man shifts his attention from wasting a Fortify on one person and over to the conversation at hand.

Rodrigue says, “Oh? I wasn’t aware Felix’s group was allowed to have others along. I’d be happy to come with you both.” 

This sends Felix through six stages of horror and straight into blinding rage. He resists the urge to scream.

“I don’t care,” the boar tells them both. “Let’s just get moving.” He tries to rise to his feet again, which gets both Rodrigue and Gilbert trying to push him back down.

“Please, Your Highness,” Gilbert says, all stern, distinctly paternal affection. “You must not strain yourself until a healer has seen to you.”

That Annette is nearby to witness this is intolerable. Felix adds ‘calling up Thoron and tossing it at Gilbert’s head’ to the list of very reasonable responses about which he is exercising restraint.

“Overtaxing your injuries is no way to remain fit for combat,” adds Rodrigue, whose particular brand of paternal affection is much more soft-spoken but no less pointed at an animal who couldn’t care less. The boar growls and smacks Rodrigue's hand away before he can throw down another Fortify.

Felix tells them, “You can’t come. The boar and I travel alone.”

Unsurprisingly for a man determined to focus on the least important thing in a room, Rodrigue sighs and says, “_Must_ you speak of him that way?” 

Felix has lost count of how many times they’ve had this argument in the past seven years. “Go on,” he says. “Try to tell me I’m wrong _now_. Persuade me that he _isn’t_ a wild animal who only lives to slaughter. I'm eager to hear your justifications for obeying a beast drunk on its own lust for blood.”

“_Felix,_” his father chides, while Gilbert’s frown furrows deeper.

“This is why you’re not coming with us,” Felix says, stepping between them to get at the boar directly. His “Stay put” to the boar gets him a muttered “Wasted effort,” but the boar doesn’t shove Felix away as Felix casts a Recover, closing up the better part of his injuries. Then the boar is on his feet, heedless of Rodrigue and Gilbert’s concerned calls in his march towards their horses. 

“Felix and I will travel alone,” the boar proclaims. (Felix has to assume this reversal on his previous ‘I don’t care about anything but killing Edelgard’ stance has everything to do with how Rodrigue and Gilbert seem determined to dote on him.) “Those are the Professor’s instructions. This is not open to discussion.”

From behind them, the Professor says, “Gilbert can come with you.” 

“Professor,” Felix starts, but they hold up a hand to stop him.

“You might need the extra help with Dimitri’s injury,” the Professor says. They tap their chin thoughtfully and offer, “We can say that Gilbert is your father, I guess? The resemblance is a bit off, but we could say your mother had dark hair…”

This, probably, is the second worst thing the Professor could have said. It is the second worst, because when it comes to the first worst—

“I believe my resemblance to my son is apparent enough,” says Rodrigue. “It would be my honor to accompany His Highness back to Garreg Mach.”

Felix, who sometimes thinks he has heard a comment about family resemblances every day since he was three, can’t figure out a counterargument other than _I don’t want you coming, so fuck off_. It’s a fine argument, in Felix’s opinion, but the only person who has ever actually listened to it is already his assigned travel partner and busy growling away Annette’s attempts to help him with his bandages.

Felix briefly considers putting faith in the Goddess again when the Professor shakes their head. “That’s the issue. Too many people know what Duke Fraldarius looks like. You’d risk giving Felix away.”

With a nod of his head, Rodrigue concedes the point, and Felix does not openly sigh in relief.

(Reasonable Responses Restrained: 3)

Felix’s old man says, “Felix, Gilbert, I trust His Highness to your care.”

“It is my honor to safeguard his well-being,” Gilbert answers.

Felix says, “Shut up.”

“Enough.” The boar pulls his traveling tunic back on and only pauses to nod to Felix before striding to their bags, leaving everyone standing around in his wake. On other days, Felix might bristle at the silent command, but today he is more than in agreement with the boar’s desire to get away from the rest of the group as quickly as possible.

Before he can leave, though, Felix’s old man catches his arm in his deceptively iron grip. Felix grits his teeth and sneers, “What do you want, old man? I need to catch up with your precious boar prince before he gets himself killed.”

In a soft, sincere tone that makes Felix want to throw something at him (Restraint Count: 4), Felix’s father says, “Thank you, Felix. I’m grateful for the assistance you offer His Highness.”

“I’m not doing this for you,” Felix says, and yanks his arm free. “Nor am I doing it to _serve_ the royal line. I’m doing it because we need the boar alive to win this war, and only I am capable of reining that beast in.”

For some reason, Felix’s old man smiles at him. Like he knows something that Felix doesn’t and is just waiting for Felix to catch up. “Of course,” he says.

Felix hears another growling call of his name and looks ahead—the boar is already at the horses, and Felix knows from experience that the beast only waits so long before he starts off on his own. Felix doesn’t bother to inform Gilbert of this fact as he grabs his own things and readies for the ride south.

It’s remarkable how much Felix finds himself in accord with the boar when it comes to the exhausting nature of traveling alongside Gilbert.

“Cease,” the boar commands, steering his horse out of range of his loyal knight’s attentions. “I neither want nor need your concern. I’m _fine_.”

“Your Highness—” Gilbert begins.

“‘Richard,’” Felix corrects.

Gilbert pauses. Frowns at him. Felix wonders if Gilbert knows how to do anything but frown.

“We are alone,” Gilbert says. “There is no need for pretences.”

“It’s good practice,” Felix says, with zero attempt to hide his amusement.

The boar glances over at him—they have _never_ kept up with the cover story alone on any other trip—but says nothing, his attention quickly returning again to the rough (but improved) road back to Garreg Mach.

It isn’t, Felix knows, that the boar dislikes Gilbert. The boar doesn’t much like anyone these days, but he’s as tolerant of Gilbert’s existence as he is of any of them, and given what Felix remembers of how Dimitri spoke of Gustave as a child, it’s clear enough that he used to be very fond of the knight who helped train him.

Felix thinks that, instead, it is that Gilbert wants the boar to be something that he refuses to pretend at anymore. When it comes down to it, a crown is just a collar worn on the head instead of around the neck. These days, this beast only wears chains forged by its delusions of the dead.

Gilbert sighs. “Then—Richard. At least let us break to change your bandages.”

“No. We ride until nightfall. If my wounds require attention, they may be seen to then.”

Felix watches Gilbert from the corner of his eye. He watches a war in him, between duty to the boar’s well-being and duty to obey his commands.

Then the old knight sighs once more and answers, “As you wish.” 

Felix isn’t surprised. But he still finds himself nudging his horse to pick up pace so that he doesn’t have to ride beside this embodiment of all of knighthood's ideals.

The boar’s wounds do need attention at nightfall. This does not make him any more agreeable to assistance than he was in the afternoon. “I can handle myself,” the beast growls. He doesn’t let Gilbert near him, instead stalking off to tend to his injuries in privacy and with a tree at his back. He's like that when he eats, Felix has noticed. He will brood all day in the cathedral with his back to the whole of the monastery, but in those rare moments where Felix catches him eating or sleeping, he always has something solid at his back.

Rather than bear witness to the boar licking his wounds, Felix hunts them down a dinner of pheasants and gets a cooking fire started. By the time the meat is roasted, the boar has completed his sulking self-maintenance, and Gilbert looks like he is wearing the headache that Felix feels boring into the front of his skull.

“Boar,” Felix calls, yanking one of the birds from the fire. “Are you eating tonight, or will you starve yourself into even greater heights of uselessness?” 

Gilbert says, “That is no way to address your prince.” 

“My husband,” Felix corrects. For the first time, he offers gratitude to the Professor for the stupidity of the ruse. “Sorry, _dad_, but I’ll address my own spouse however I please.”

Gilbert frowns at him. The boar strides over to the fireplace, grabs a bird, and withdraws out of the firelight like a wolf eager to steal scraps from human hunters but not so tame as to trust them as it eats.

Gilbert says, “It is important to show respect.” He adds in a mutter, “_In a marriage_, if you must insist on this foolishness.”

Felix just rolls his eyes. “He doesn’t mind. Do you, boar?”

“I do not care how I am addressed, only that I not be bothered by with this idiocy,” the beast declares. He does so with a mouth full of pheasant, bits of meat slipping from between his teeth and his fingers a mess of grease and skin.

Gilbert looks aghast. Felix, who has witnessed this several times already, just mutters “Animal,” and turns his eyes away so he can continue eating.

This, unfortunately, gets the disapproving attention back on _him_. It feels unfair. Felix is at least chewing with his mouth closed.

Gilbert says, “You must consider the consequences of how you address your… husband.”

“As the boar said. I’m not interested in being bothered with this discussion.” 

If the world were a better place, this would be where the conversation stopped. 

Gilbert continues, “It is not merely a matter of respect. Nor is it alone a question of how you yourself are expected to comport yourself, although I can understand your father’s disappointment in that. His Highness—” 

“Richard.”

“_Richard_ has always been a sensitive boy. You must consider what effect your words have had on him. You were always his closest companion. Do you not think—” 

The boar gets to his feet. His portion is only half-eaten, his fingers a mess that he doesn’t bother to brush off as he rises. He tosses the rest of the bird to Felix, who catches it with a grimace. “I’ll finish making camp. Do not disturb me.”

Gilbert, apparently not wanting to speak while his liege lord walks away, temporarily shuts up. Felix takes this as a motivator to finish his meal as quickly as possible.

He is not fast enough. For the first time ever, Felix regrets not trying to mirror Raphael and Caspar’s eating habits.

Gilbert asks, “Has it not occurred to you that by addressing him as a beast, you have caused him to treat himself as one?”

“Forgive me if I find that difficult to believe,” Felix sneers in answer. “But were that the case, the beast would be everything you want it to be. You remind the boar of its obligations often enough that it should have transformed into your ideal within a month of your reunion.” 

“‘It.’” You could carve stone into furrowed brows that deep. “Is it not enough that you deny him his humanity? Now you will not even address him as a living being?”

“It _isn’t_ a living being,” Felix snaps back. “It is a corpse, weighed down by its hunger for blood and wearing a dead man’s skin. It says so itself.”

“You must not speak of him that way,” Gilbert insists. Felix wonders if it’s a symptom of old age to never learn anything new to say, or if it’s merely an affliction shared by all the knights of Faerghus. “You must not deny him his humanity, Felix.”

“His _humanity_. Goddess.” Felix pushes himself to his feet, abandoning fire and dinner both. “Perhaps you are right about the boar. Perhaps its mind is so weak that words have shaped it into this. If that is the case, it is not my words that have transformed him into what we have left of a man now.”

“Felix,” Gilbert begins, but speed has always been one of Felix’s better traits, and tolerance for stupidity has never been one of his worst.

“The boar isn’t obsessed with being an _animal_. It is obsessed with its _duty to the dead_. That’s not me, that is _nothing_ I have ever asked of him. It’s you who taught it to prioritize imaginary obligations to the scattered ashes and skeletons underneath our feet. His growls of vengeance and slaughter come straight from the mouths of the best tutors Faerghus has to offer.”

Gilbert says, “That is not what we taught him, Felix. We taught him to be a knight.”

The sheer _blindness_ of it.

“_It's the same thing_. All your chivalry and nobility is just an excuse for the worship of death and the dead.” 

Now that he’s started, Felix can’t stop again, and he hates when that happens, hates when his own speed leaves him spilling out truths that would be better kept between his teeth for all anyone ever listens to him. 

Why does no one ever listen?

Felix says, “Your ideals are just a pretty mask for the ugly reality of a blood-stained spear. What right do you have to be surprised that that is what Dimitri has turned into? All I ever did was see it before the rest of you, as you could not, because you’re all too sick with the same disease you've killed him with. It’s you, _Gustave_, you and my father and this damned country’s obsession with duty and honor—_you_ made him into a beast. _You_ took Dimitri away from _me_.” 

Felix stops.

Deliberately, Felix brings breath back into his lungs, then lets it go. Deliberately, he forces his fingers to stop biting into the heels of his hands. The forest is loud with the lives of its nighttime creatures, but it is all silence now between Gilbert and himself.

Felix can’t hear the boar anywhere.

Gilbert rises to his feet. He does not look angry. Worse, he does not look struck.

“He spoke of you so fondly,” Gilbert says. “For days before your visits, he would always be excited to the point of distraction. He was so studious as a child, but his lessons seemed to flow in through one ear and out the other whenever he was struck by his eagerness to see you again.”

Felix says, “I’m not here to waste time talking about the dead.”

“Perhaps you are right about us.” Gilbert closes his eyes, and when he crumbles, he does so like the countless soldiers Felix has watched run through in this war. Though there is nothing close to the Fraldarius family resemblance, Felix sickens to recognize so well that expression. “Perhaps I, and even your father, bear responsibility for what has happened to Dimitri. He needed guidance, and we did not provide it. That is our burden to bear. For that reason, I must stand by him and see to it that he not be lost for good.”

“And what about Annette?”

Gilbert’s eyes open. His eyebrows raise, as if he has any right not to understand what Felix is saying. “Annette has grown into a fine young woman,” he says.

“All this prattling on about duty and responsibility.” In through his mouth. Out through his nose. Felix is not like these fools. He is not lost in his own emotions. “All this obsession with serving your ideals. Yet where it matters, you fail in it on all counts—to him _and_ to your own child. You aren’t worth this argument.”

“You are correct,” Gilbert says, which almost makes Felix throw something at him on the spot. (Count: 5) “Yet you yourself are worth the argument, Felix. It is to you children that your father and I must entrust the future of Faerghus. For that reason, we must not fail in encouraging you towards the right path.”

Felix cannot bear to hear another word of this nonsense. When he joins the boar in setting up camp, the boar does not bark at him to stay away. The work is quick between them, and by the time they’re done, Gilbert has cleaned up the fire and food they left.

That night, Felix once more falls into sleep listening to quiet pleas to the names that defined every moment of his childhood.

The Professor rerouted them through the backroads, away from main towns and even most villages, because, as they put it, “Gilbert will probably call Dimitri a prince on accident if we try to make him lie.” As the boar’s injury isn’t so bad that Felix’s limited healing abilities and the concoctions the Professor shoved into their packs can’t help, it overall should be a relatively decent trip. They shouldn’t even need their cover story.

Three days in, a group of six soldiers hails them along the road, and Felix is utterly unsurprised to find that fate fucking hates him.

“Greetings,” says the leader among the soldiers, drawing his horse up alongside theirs. “I’m Nikolaj Severin Hywell, a knight sworn to House Rowe. To where do you travel, strangers?”

Felix, who is not about to admit that he’s been practicing this, says, “We’re riding south to Arianrhod. We hear there’s less bandit activity around there.”

“That’s a coincidence!” says the leader. “We’re riding in the same direction. May we ask your names, sirs?” 

Goddess strike Felix down now. “Yuri. Yuri Lowell,” Felix says. “My husband, Richard, and my father, Oliver.”

The boar grunts, his head still lowered. Gilbert clears his throat.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you all,” says Nikolaj, drawing his hand before his chest and another behind his back in a bow that would be pitch-perfect if Nikolaj weren’t still mounted. “It would be our honor to escort you down to Arianrhod, if you will permit it. We’ve heard rumors of the rebel army moving through here. Between that and the bandit activity, you’ll be safer traveling alongside us.”

Emphasis on the Goddess striking _now_.

Clearing his throat again—has Gilbert never lied? ever? how did he even make it to Teutates?—Gilbert says, “That is very kind. However, there is no need to go to the trouble.”

“It’s no trouble!” Nikolaj insists. His smile is as bright as one of Annette’s, and his voice is just as cheerful. “It is the duty of a knight to protect all those he encounters. That’s why we fight and grow stronger, after all.”

Correction: strike him down ten minutes ago.

Felix watches Gilbert look to the boar for a cue and get nothing but hunched shoulders and fingers tightening on his mount's reins. When Gilbert looks to Felix, Felix can only sigh.

“Sure,” Felix tells the knight. “You can come with us.”

“What my son means,” Gilbert corrects, “is that we’re grateful for the kind offer.” 

Felix doesn’t shove his face into the mane of his horse, but it’s a near thing.

(Count: Frankly, Felix has lost track.) 

It is roughly two hours into the ride that things go wrong. 

Gilbert, Felix has been horrified to learn, can actually pull off being relatively personable in the context of chatting with an eager young knight. 

There’s an advantage to this: there are three Dukedom soldiers riding ahead of them, but Nikolaj coming up to ride beside Gilbert means there are only two at their rear. That’s preferable to having all three behind them, and Felix has already shifted his pack to put his weapon better in reach. The odds wouldn’t be (_won’t be_, says the very cynical and consistently accurate part of Felix’s brain) in their favor, no, but they’re a little better with fewer knights behind them and the leader in easy reach, and Felix has to trust that Gilbert would be able to draw damage as he and the boar take advantage of their superior speed. The tricky part for Felix will be either fighting on horseback or dismounting quickly, but the boar is trained for mounted combat, and Felix has to trust he won’t be too rusty if it comes to that. 

Still. Felix only gives partial credit to Gilbert, because he doesn’t buy that this was a tactical decision.

“Oh, well.” Nikolaj is laughing, rubbing the back of his neck. “When I was a kid, I was set to inherit my family title. But all I really wanted to do was protect people, you know? So when I was old enough, I… sort of ran away from home so I could be a knight. I don’t think my dad ever really forgave me for it.”

Gilbert, when he answers, does so with more paternal concern than Felix can stomach. “Possibly, yet I cannot imagine any father would not be proud to witness his son grow into such a fine young knight as yourself. If you speak to him, perhaps you could reconcile now.”

Nikolaj’s voice grows quiet, an odd note in such an earnest, cheerful person. “He died in the war,” Nikolaj explains. “He called for me to return home, and I failed to get there in time. That’s why… I won’t fail to protect anyone again.”

Felix, tempted to guide his horse to the front of the line (Count: One thousand? One thousand and one?), takes one look at the boar’s hunched posture and decides against it. Instead, he draws his horse closer to the beast’s, lowering his voice.

“Richard,” he says. 

Nothing. Dammit. 

Quieter, Felix tries, “Boar.”

The beast lifts his head, but only a fraction. He glances at Felix through the curtain of his hair. “It’s nothing. Focus on the ride ahead of us, and our destination to come.” 

Felix understands. They’ll have to find a way to shake off the soldiers before they reach Arianrhod. Felix wonders what Gilbert would think about attacking their escort in the night.

He does not wonder what the beast would think. Midnight treachery is a level of pragmatism ranks below tricking enemies out of supplies and murdering them for their good deeds. It’s impossible now to imagine that the boar has never done it once in his five isolated years of vengeance and survival.

When Felix looks away from the boar, he spots Nikolaj watching them, a curiosity reading so open Felix wonders if this boy is even capable of deception. 

“That’s… a cute nickname,” Nikolaj tries. “Is, uh, your husband okay?” 

“He’s recovering from an injury,” Felix answers. He makes his words as clipped as he hopes to make the conversation.

“Oh!” says Nikolaj. “We’re short on supplies, but I can help, if you have anything.”

Belatedly, Felix realizes that he fucked up.

Gilbert supplies, “We have a few concoctions. Unfortunately, my son-in-law has been slow to accept any assistance.”

“Allow me to help,” Nikolaj says, and reaches over to the boar’s pack. 

Mid air, the boar seizes hold of the hand. The horses keep moving. It jerks on the boar’s grip, but he does not let go.

“I am fine,” the boar says. Felix’s instincts scream, _Danger_, and he can tell the horses feel the same. “My injury can wait.”

There are imprints left behind when the boar lets go of Nikolaj’s hand. Imprints of where he reached out with a hunted man’s reflexes, and held on with a soldier’s grip.

Oh, fuck. The boar’s fucking _cloak_ is with them.

This time, when Nikolaj gives one of his awkward smiles, the unsteadiness doesn’t feel as blind and earnest. The commotion has caused a slow in the pace of the whole group, and the distance between them and the soldiers before and behind them begins to close.

Trying to keep his muscles relaxed, Felix says, “My husband dislikes people getting near to him if he doesn’t know them well. He hasn’t had a pleasant time in the war.”

“I understand,” Nikolaj says. He looks at Felix with all the emotional honesty of Ashe, and all of Ashe’s quiet, hidden wariness. “Just, uh, hey. Is it okay if we check your bags?”

“No,” the boar says.

“I understand. You’re private people, right?” There’s a laugh there, uneasy but persistent. Nikolaj rubs the back of his neck, and Felix thinks, _Fuck fuck fuck._ “Where did you say you were riding down from?” 

The boar says, “Northern Rowe.”

“Right, but up there, where?” Nikolaj’s eyes flicker to his soldiers ahead and behind him. They have slowed so much that they’re nearly at a stop. Their swords are in easier reach than Felix’s, and their clothing better protection against the bite of steel. “It’s just, we heard that rebel forces had been seen near Lake Teutates. And there are these rumors about this one-eyed demon, a guy who looks a lot like the dead prince…” 

“That,” Felix says, “sounds like the kind of nonsense invented by bored soldiers on nightwatch.”

“Probably!” Nikolaj smiles again. It isn’t a cruel smile. Everything about Nikolaj tells Felix he is not a cruel person. “I hope so, anyway. You know, I guess I should have asked earlier, but do you have any weapons with you?” 

“That would be against the law,” the boar points out. “We are commoners, after all.”

“Sure,” Nikolaj says. “But the roads here are dangerous. Bandits, like you said.” He looks between them and says, “I wouldn’t make a big deal of it if you did, okay? I don’t mind looking the other way.” 

It’s an out. It’s the perfect out. Nikolaj is trying to give this to them, and they could have taken it if the boar _had not brought his cloak with them_.

Felix says, “Then it's probably better you don't look to our belongings. You wouldn't want to be in a position to knowingly permit a crime, after all.”

“You’re right,” Nikolaj says. He runs a hand through his hair, and Felix wonders how old he is. Younger than Ashe and Annette, surely. Closer to Cyril’s age? “Still. Do you mind if we check anyway? It will only take a moment.”

The boar’s murmur, when it comes, is quiet and low, with the coyness of a lion inviting a deer into its den. “Is that truly necessary?” the boar asks. His eye flickers over to Felix only briefly, but Felix knows.

Felix shifts his weight in his stirrups. He flicks open the button at the top of his pack.

“It is,” says Nikolaj. “As a knight, I swore to protect this region. I know it’s a little invasive, but… This is what I have to do.”

The boar says, “I understand. We all must do our duty.” 

For the first time since they left the lake, the beast smiles. Then it takes Nikolaj’s throat in hand and crushes it.

Dimitri was eight. Felix was seven and ten months. Felix’s father brought him to Fhirdiad to celebrate Dimitri’s birthday, and after all the adults who bored them with demands for good behavior and all the parties that were for other people and not for them, Dimitri snuck Felix away from everyone else and into the king’s private library to read a book that he promised Felix would like.

It was old, older than any of the books they’d been allowed to touch before, gold-leafed and written down by the hand of a monk. Its illustrations were painted with inks from crushed jewels and rare beetles, its pages thick animal hide. It was priceless and off-limits, and neither of them thought to check if a newer, less precious copy existed. When they sat down together to read, Dimitri spread the book across their laps, half for each, and asked Felix to turn the pages to avoid the risks that came with Dimitri's sudden bursts of power.

The book, like so many in that library, was a tale of the King of the Lions and his loyal right-hand man. It told of adventures and battles, of beautiful maidens in need of rescue, of evil emperors in need of justice’s blade. It crossed all of Fódlan and back and overflowed with the ideals they had been raised to obey.

Dimitri said, turning to one of the very last illustrations, “See? Don’t you think Kyphon looks like you in this one?”

“They all look like me,” Felix said, which was only true in that Kyphon always looked like a Fraldarius full grown, and one day that’s what Felix would be.

“No,” Dimitri insisted, “_Look._ This one looks like _you_.” 

Kyphon always had the dark Fraldarius hair, but he had a hundred faces. His father once said that Kyphon had been depicted with the face of every Fraldarius man to serve the crown. Sword in hand, Blaiddyd liege in front of him—the children of Fraldarius were raised to look at tapestries of their ancestor and understand where their futures would take them. In all these centuries, none had diverted yet.

This Kyphon, however, did not have a sword or walk behind his king. This Kyphon was unarmed, on foot in the forest that once surrounded Fhirdiad. This Kyphon’s king stood beside him.

Dimitri said to Felix, “Kyphon was Loog’s sworn man. But I was thinking, I already have Glenn for that. So I thought you don’t have to be my Shield, since he already is.”

“Oh,” Felix said.

“No, not like that,” Dimitri answered, because he had always been so sensitive to Felix’s moods, he had _known_ Felix then and never failed to reach out to him when it mattered most. “Felix, I’m not saying I don’t want you with me. I’m saying that if Glenn’s going to be my Shield, you can be just my friend.”

Felix said, “I don’t want to be _just_ your friend.” 

Felix remembers that moment. He remembers that Dimitri reached for his hands. That his too-large eyes that mirrored his too-large heart had fixed on Felix’s, and Felix had looked back even though he hated meeting anyone's gaze for long. Dimitri had kept his hands in his, and he had taken such care that his strength did not bruise Felix’s fingers.

Dimitri said to him, “Listen. _Everyone_ is going to serve me. Glenn and Sylvain and Ingrid, even Miklan—everyone. Even your father will. They will all kneel to me, because that is their duty, and they’ll follow whatever path I take. But if you’re my friend, and _only_ my friend, then you don’t _have_ to follow me. Glenn can be my Kyphon on the battlefield, but you can be the Kyphon that walks at my side.”

Felix remembers the way Dimitri had smiled. Felix remembers feeling like he would do anything to keep that smile.

Dimitri had said, “I’d like that, if that’s what you want, too.”

It’s not just that weaker weapons make killing take longer. It’s that they mean that the people you kill take longer to die. Felix, steel sword in hand and a mess of corpses around him, really misses his Sword of Zoltan.

The beast drops the last of the bodies to the dirt and runs a hand through its hair. Fighting unarmed, it has managed to stay mostly free of mess, but its fists are a mass of bruises, and its wounds have opened up again. After taking a moment to breathe, it kneels by a corpse and searches through the pockets until it comes across a concoction that it downs in one large gulp.

“We must pull the bodies into the woods and find a stream to wash in,” Gilbert cautions. “I am afraid there is no time for burial.”

“This didn’t have to happen,” Felix tells the beast. “They would have let us get away with the weapons. We would have been fine if you didn’t insist on bringing that damned cloak of yours.”

The boar says, “Six more dogs of the Empire put down. What matter is it if it is now or later?”

“Your Highness.” Gilbert looks at him gravely. “They were but knights doing their duty.”

“Duty,” the boar says, “is but a pretty mask for a bloodied spear. What matters their duty when they kill and subjugate across our lands?”

Gilbert tries, “They seemed honorable men,” but the beast cuts him off with a look.

“Honor matters little if it is in service to evil. An Emperor can conquer nothing and subjugate no people without soldiers to follow her commands. They are complicit in what they have brought to bear.”

There’s a look Gilbert gets when he has something to say but is too damned obedient to say it. He has it now. Felix _hates_ that look.

So Felix does what Gilbert won’t.

“And so you slaughter them brutally, just the same as if they were they were the Emperor herself.” Felix’s sword pulls towards the ground, but Felix keeps it in his grip. He does not let its heaviness take him. “An impressive reach to justify your atrocities.”

And the beast—the beast looks in his eyes, midwinter at its coldest, when the snow has long since stopped falling and all the fields have frozen down past the deepest of wells. Felix forces himself to keep eye contact. To hold his ground as he has against all the worst that northern winds have ever thrown his way.

The beast says, “I justify nothing. This savage and bloody path I walk is my responsibility and mine alone, Felix. If you cannot accept it, then turn away or strike me down. But I shall not cease until I reach its violent end and stop what that woman has begun.”

Then, the beast lowers itself once more to the corpses it has left in the dirt.

Felix says, “It won’t.”

The beast stops. Its head tilts towards Felix. Its good eye focuses on him, and Felix measures that the monster's mind is, for once, fully here.

“It won’t stop,” Felix says. “You’ll kill her and die doing it, but the fighting won’t stop. This war only grows hungrier the more you feed it.”

The beast rises. In his royal arms he has the dead body of a Dukedom soldier—a Kingdom soldier—soon to be thrown aside to decay. His impossible strength makes it seem like no more than a child’s discarded ragdoll. 

“What would you have me do?” When the beast speaks, it is not with words forced harshly through its throat. It is with breath pulled into the air against the speaker’s will, a question dragged out and left on the ground between them. “End the fighting by permitting the conquest of our lands? Allow the Empire to slaughter and subjugate our people unchecked merely because we must become monsters to stop it? _Tell me_, Felix. What other path is there but to wade through these bloodied waters until those who made them meet their ends?”

There are words to describe it. Felix knows that. There are sentences out there to capture what, exactly, he wants Dimitri to do. But they slip through his fingers as his sword never does, not even now, not even under the weight of all this blood.

All he can think is, _Not this. I don’t want this._

Felix says, “I’ll walk this bloody path beside you. And when you go too far for even the beast you are now, I will cut you down and bring it to an end.”

These words are not the ones he is looking for. They are only as close to them as he can articulate. The truth of what he means curls underneath his tongue, waiting for him to know it. 

But for the first time in years, he thinks he can taste it there.

“Ah,” the boar says. “Then you have found your own duty.”

“My duty is to see to it that you remain alive as a weapon against the Empire,” Felix tells him. “Walking beside you is a choice I have made.”

They gather up the dead in their arms and take them far enough off the path and into the woods that no one will find or mourn them, not until it is far too late. Deep in the forest, Gilbert notices the distant sound of running water, and in the stream they find Felix is able to wash the blood from his hands and face. The trip back is long but uneventful, and Gilbert doesn’t try to discuss Felix’s lack of deference a second time.

Back at Garreg Mach, Felix tells the Professor, “I’m never traveling with Gilbert again.”

They look at Felix. They glance past him towards Gilbert, standing at the front hall. They frown, a hand against their chin. They nod.

“The family resemblance is a little too weak,” they agree. 

Felix’s father calls out, “Ah, Felix! Welcome back!” 

Felix turns on his heel and heads straight for his quarters, and he doesn't come out until he hears it confirmed that his old man is drinking with the soldiers in the dining hall.

Later that week, Felix tracks down Ashe in the greenhouse. He finds him crouched down there before a bed of flowers that seems drier than the rest, humming a song that Felix recognizes as one of Annette’s.

Felix says, “I’m looking for a book. One of your stupid tales of chivalry. I don’t know if there are any copies of it around. If I described a picture in it, do you think you could find out?”

Ashe smiles, and he tells him, “I'll do my best!”  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dimitri: How do we fight back if not with war crimes?  
Felix, who has spent the past ten years scorning the closest thing the medieval ages has to a military code of conduct: I’m blanking right now but I KNOW there’s an answer to this.
> 
> For the record, Rodrigue’s assigned pseudonym is Dalen.
> 
> Next chapter: A hit single from Blackpink and my continual failure to meet the basic ship-teasing premise of a fake relationship fic.
> 
> Follow me on twitter @[marezafic](https://twitter.com/marezafic) for live updates of me accidentally writing the wrong chapter long before i finish the next one!


	4. four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Felix messes up his backstory. Sylvain and Mercedes form a cover band. Glenn's ghost probably has some regrets.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: The usual, including dehumanization, mental health problems, canon-typical themes, etc. This one gets extra bloody, though there is no onscreen violence. Note, however, that there is greater focus on Dimitri’s mental state in this chapter, and it takes a very hard downward turn, so please be careful! Note also that Felix responds with hostility and derision consistent with his previous efforts, and Sylvain... does something that works temporarily, but probably isn't a great idea. Dimitri also gets tricked into taking a drug to heal injuries and knock him out, so please be mindful of that as well.
> 
> Although only briefly, Felix refers to Dedue in narration in terms that are likely not motivated by racial prejudice but are uncomfortably racialized by context.

During the last week of Lone Moon, just before they head out on their end-of-moon missions, Felix comes across Ingrid and Ashe hovering nervously outside the old Blue Lions classroom. Felix has no interest in whatever inanity is afoot, but he can’t help but stick his head in to see what’s happening.

What he sees is the boar, hunched over a desk, writing something down.

“Wh—” Felix starts to say before Ingrid yanks him back and Ashe slams a hand over his mouth. The only thing that keeps him from biting is looking into Ashe’s stupidly earnest eyes.

“Shhh,” Ingrid says as they drag him away. “His Highness is writing his exam.” 

“_What the fuck_,” Felix understates into Ashe’s palm.

“He’s writing the certification exam for Paladin,” Ingrid explains.

Ashe adds, “The Professor said they wanted him to take the exam for Holy Knight. But since His Highness hasn’t been coming to war council for Faith tutoring, they had to ask him to do this exam instead.” 

There are so many things wrong with this that Felix can only say, “So the boar won’t come to war council, but he's still willing to take exams.” He is trying to sound derisive. It comes out incredulous instead.

“I know,” Ashe says. “And he’s…” Ashe pauses. Glances around furtively. Then tugs on Felix’s arm, a command which, for reasons unknown to Felix, Felix complies with. “Listen,” Ashe says, quiet as a thief, as he encourages Felix to peek his head into the classroom.

That is the moment when Felix realizes that the boar—the beast, the monster, the corpse that devotes itself only to avenging the dead—is singing. 

The boar is singing one of Annette’s songs.

Felix shouts, “What the fuck!” 

This causes three things to happen: 1) Ingrid and Ashe both grab Felix to try to yank him back, 2) the Professor looks up from the desk, blinks placidly at him, and says, “Hello, Felix,” and 3) the boar leaps to his feet and gets halfway into turning his chair into a bludgeoning weapon before he sees Felix, freezes, and drops it, resulting in a crash of splintering wood.

“Sorry for interrupting we’re going now bye!” spews out Ashe as he and Ingrid drag Felix away from the Officer’s Academy as quickly as they can. In the shock of what he saw and the rapid pull of limbs, Felix only remembers to shove them off of him when they’re already far into the gardens, near that gazebo with the bizarre glowing orb. Ingrid and Ashe don’t seem to care how annoyed Felix is at being dragged off, their attention entirely elsewhere.

“You saw that, right?” Ingrid asks. She’s beaming at Ashe like he just promised her an extra serving of dinner. “Not saw. It’s not the seeing. You _heard_ it, didn't you?”

“I heard it!” Ashe exclaims. “It’s hard to believe, but—he really was, wasn’t he?”

“He was!” Ingrid looks more excited than Felix thinks he’s seen her in moons. “He really was!”

“I didn’t recognize the song,” Ashe said. “But maybe it’s something he picked up traveling, or, is it a court song I wouldn't know?”

“No,” Ingrid says. “It's nothing from court.” She gasps. “Do you think he made it up?”

Felix tells them, “It was one of Annette’s.” 

They stop. They stare at him.

“What? I know I’m not the only one who listens to her.” He can’t help but fold his arms and glare back at them. “That was ‘Creepy Creepy Creepity Creep.’” 

The stares continue. He finds himself increasingly impatient with that.

“She favors it in the gardens, as long as she isn’t craving dinner,” Felix adds. “You have to be familiar with it.”

“Not everyone is experts in Annette’s full repertoire of songs,” Ingrid answers.

Ashe says, “You really are a thoughtful person, aren’t you, Felix?”

“What? No. Shut up. I just enjoy Annette’s singing.” 

“Enough to have named her songs for yourself,” Ingrid grins. “Ashe, I really do see what you mean about him being like Sir Nemain.”

“Right?” Ashe is smiling in that way that Felix finds frustrating but also impossible to directly yell at him for.

So he glares at Ingrid instead. “Not another word about this. Either of you.”

“Right,” Ingrid says, snapping back to attention. “This isn’t about Felix being tenderhearted underneath his prickly exterior—” 

“I said shut up—”

“—it’s about _His Highness_,” Ingrid finishes.

“Yeah!” Ashe raises an excited fist. “His Highness singing one of Annette’s songs! Oh, that’s even better than if he made it up! It means he’s thinking about her! Do you think it means he’s improving?”

“It has to mean that, doesn’t it?” Ingrid can barely seem to contain her excitement at this fantasy. “I was beginning to wonder if maybe he—but no. Why would he be singing Annette’s songs if he doesn't still care about her?”

“Exactly!” Ashe says. “He got distracted and let his guard down writing the exam. And then it slipped out!”

“Which means that it’s still there, buried under everything that has happened,” Ingrid replies.

Felix feels a little like there’s a hand trying to crush his throat. They’re so enthusiastic. They’re so _sure_. It’s tearing the breath from his lungs.

So, as he was raised to, Felix responds to violence with equal force.

“So he sang. So what?” 

The snap of his voice gets Ingrid and Ashe looking at him as if he has struck them both in one blow. He doesn’t care. Someone has to be a reality check. 

Felix continues, “He sang often enough five years ago. What does it matter? The boar prince laughed, then, too, and attended dinner and teatime. He put on all the niceties of humanity as a mask of his true nature. But that is all these things ever were: a _mask_, hiding the beast underneath. Don’t hope for anything else.”

Ingrid has that look she always gets when she thinks Felix has gone too far. “Felix, stop it. He wasn’t like this back then. He was our friend.” 

“On the outside, certainly. That was what he pretended at being. But can you deny that this monster was lurking underneath the entire time?” 

Felix waits. He really does. He gives Ingrid the chance to prove him wrong, but she can’t. No one can. Everyone saw what happened at Remire and the Holy Tomb. Everyone saw what had been waiting to come out. 

Felix has to drive the point home. “The prince you’re hoping to swear your lives to died a miserable death a decade ago, along with everyone else in his family. Give up on him already. _Move on_.”

Felix expects Ingrid’s anger, the way her hands curl into fists, that lift of her chin she gets when she’s trying not to start the fight her instincts call for. It doesn’t bother him, not with it as familiar to him as his own feelings of wrath.

But Ashe’s face—

Ashe, expression drawn, puts a hand on Ingrid’s arm to steady her. “I’m sorry that’s how you feel, Felix,” Ashe says. His voice is even and firm. His gaze is level with Felix. “But I think it’s as much of a mistake to turn your eyes from good things as it is to look away from sorrow.”

Felix answers, “There is nothing good in that beast. Whatever good there was all burned away, long before _you _ever knew him.”

Ingrid and Sylvain—_they_ had shared Dimitri with Felix. But the rest of them have no idea who the real Dimitri had been. They don't know what was lost.

“I’m not stupid, Felix,” Ashe says. “I know the difference between a mask and a lie. Do you?”

Felix breathes.

Despite himself, he finds his body a mirror to Ingrid’s, the lift of his chin the parallel to her own. They were all raised in the same way, the set of them. It is perhaps only natural that their bodies would be trained to speak the same dialect, as much as their minds had been. 

Felix tells Ashe and Ingrid both, “What a waste. You’re both that desperate to die for a cause, aren’t you? You will never see the truth, no matter how clearly it declares itself to you.”

Ingrid replies, “I was thinking the same thing about you.”

Felix scoffs, loud and deliberate, and turns on his heel for the training grounds. He can’t afford the company of foolish idealists any longer. If he is going to be assigned another mission alongside the boar, he needs to gather up what little patience he has to put up with its unmasked brutality.

The mission, it turns out, is less of a problem than the distance required to get there. Specifically, how there has been less of it than anticipated. Getting ahead of schedule is the worst mistake Felix has ever made. 

“This is pointless,” the boar growls as they approach the local inn. “We may as well camp on the outskirts.”

“We’re here because bandit activity is high. Do you think you can handle all the thieves around here without anyone else to assist us?”

“Yes.”

Felix can admit that it was stupid to ask this. He can admit that to himself and be very annoyed at the boar anyway. 

The town is one of Faerghus’s many walled residences. These walls are what had the Professor order them, in no uncertain terms, to not ride beyond it once they reached it. But in following these instructions, they have arrived within an hour’s ride of their meeting point with a day to spare and nowhere else to go. 

“Then let me be the one to tell you that you can’t,” Felix tells the boar. “You’re not invincible, boar. You’re mortal, like the rest of us. You take up half of Mercedes’s healing time every battle.”

The boar answers back, “I will endure. I cannot die until I have put the dead to rest.”

Felix stops in his tracks outside, counts down from ten, and tries to breathe. This exchange—the boar saying something completely infuriating, and Felix having to take a literal moment to keep himself from throwing something in public—has become so commonplace between them that the boar just folds his arms and waits for Felix to be done.

When he knows he can speak without shouting, Felix tells the damned beast, “Listen to me. We’re getting a room. You’re staying in it and keeping your raving quiet enough not to raise alarm among the other guests. Tomorrow, we leave, and you can sate your thirst for blood on the bandits the Professor sent us here to fight.”

“Fine,” the boar snarls, shoving past him and into the weathered-stone establishment. A blast of noise swings out through the open doors, and the boar stops in his tracks.

This is not the first time something like this has happened. Dimitri was never at home in large groups, though he’d learned to hide it faster than Felix had when they were children, but this beast seems outright unnerved by them, shying away at the earliest opportunity, with any length of time in one making him more erratic and hostile (_sicker_, whispers an idiot part of his brain, forgetting that a sick person might be treated) than ever. So Felix follows after to extract the boar from the situation before things can go badly and is promptly hit in the face with an unfamiliar song in a familiar voice.

Two familiar voices.

> My grief-stone carve | with guided caution  
Step on the shards | thou shattered gently  
Such that regret | last not to rend me  
I beg thee burn | my beating burden  
The mark, thou strike | wait thou for murder?  
What end is this | but that thou wished for?  
So swift, unswerving | sweet beast, slay me  
The branch-foe loosed, | no hearth-dust lingers  
Mine eye-rain, thou, | thou art I rended

A cheer rises up amongst the crowd, and in the tavern that forms the inn’s first floor, Sylvain and Mercedes bow to their audience.

Felix announces, “We’re finding another inn.” The boar almost beats him out the front door. 

It takes them roughly twenty minutes to discover that there are no other inns. It isn’t a very big town, and war has been excellent for producing migrants and terrible for producing people with money to spare, which means that only one inn has managed to stay in business. So, Felix resisting grumbling under his breath and the boar practically growling, they head back to their starting point, where the music, unfortunately, continues to play.

Felix walks up to the front desk, the boar a half-step behind him. “A room for the night,” Felix says, as the innkeeper nods. 

“Money upfront. How many beds?”

Felix opens his mouth, then closes it. Newlyweds. Right. “One.”

The innkeeper pauses and looks at the boar, a half-step behind Felix with arms folded and a glower on his face. “…Step-brothers?”

Felix tries very hard not to grimace. “We’re married,” he says.

Another pause. “Okay.” 

Felix glares.

“Your room won’t be ready for a half-hour or so,” the innkeeper continues. “Why don’t you wait in the tavern? We have a performer from Adrestia tonight.”

Others probably wouldn’t notice the way the beast tenses, but to Felix, it’s as clear as the change in a hound catching a scent. The beast’s eye traces over the tavern, thorough with distrust. It catches on Sylvain and Mercedes, singing together in a cleared space among the crowd. Perhaps the boar identifies the words he overheard in relation to the truth he knows.

Slowly, as if unused to the feeling, the beast relaxes.

Felix can’t help but do the same. “Fine,” he says to the innkeeper, and turns to gesture at the boar. “You heard him. Come along, boar.” 

The innkeeper looks up at him.

Felix sighs. “Pet name.”

The innkeeper says, “I didn’t ask.”

“_Richard_. Let’s move.” 

Felix doesn’t wait for a response, but he gets one anyway: “Whatever you say, _husband, dear_.” Privately, Felix thinks that this level of irritation should convince anyone of their cover story. 

Felix pulls the boar along, and the boar permits it, but the moment they’re into the main body of the tavern, the boar retreats to the furthest corner from anyone else and stands against the wall, positioning himself with a clear line of sight to the door and, Felix can’t help but notice, proximity to a broom that would make a reasonable (if comical) substitute for a spear. 

Felix takes the table just ahead of the boar. It’s a habit he has gotten into—the extra buffer of space seems to help keep the boar’s mood as level as possible in places like this. They sit their way through a slow ballad that sounds like it’s supposed to be seductive but, with the references to cracked ice and lost voices, makes Felix really question the kinds of things Sylvain thinks are going to get women into his bedroom. The boar is clearly antsy—every time Felix glances back towards him, he catches him in the middle of scanning the room as if for a threat. When people pass too close, cutting between the boar and Felix, the boar grits his teeth, his fingers curling tight into fists before and attention keeping close, like he expects them to turn around and knife him. 

Still. It’s tolerable. What’s worse is when Mercedes puts aside her instrument and Sylvain announces they’ll be taking a quick break, right before they both head over to join Felix at his table.

“What are you doing here,” Felix hisses at them both.

Sylvain grins. “What do you think? I, the great Zelos Cecil, and my partner Colette Barnes, are doing whatever we have to to make it in this harsh wartime economy.”

Felix, assessing Sylvain to be as useful as ever, looks at Mercedes. She says, “The roads were clearer than we expected.”

Felix groans. He doesn’t hear anything behind him, so he has to assume the boar has decided to ignore Sylvain and Mercedes and continue his silent brooding. Mercedes seems content to sit there without troubling the boar, but Felix catches Sylvain looking over that way several times before Sylvain speaks up about it.

“So,” Sylvain says, “who’s tall, broody, and handsome over there?”

Felix glares at him. Sylvain raises an eyebrow.

With a curl of his lip, Felix says, “That’s my husband. Happy?”

“Nope!” answers Sylvain with cheer. “Have you two been married long? Because you’re acting like people who have been married long enough to want a divorce.”

“We’re newlyweds,” Felix grits out.

“Really?”

“Yes. Really.”

“Wow,” Sylvain says. “You think maybe he should sit beside you? You know, being your new husband and everything.” Sylvain’s voice isn’t loud, but there’s no way the boar doesn’t hear it. “That’s kind of the thing newlywed couples would do, you know?”

The boar doesn’t bother to grunt at them, but Felix feels a ruffle of movement that he can guess is a shift into a defensive posture. Folded arms, probably. He’s favored those lately more than he ever did as a child.

“Back off,” Felix tells Sylvain. “This works for us. We know what we’re doing.”

Twenty minutes later, Felix learns that they do not know what they’re doing.

By this point, Sylvain has flitted away from their table to try to gain company for the night. Felix doesn’t entirely see the point of it—none of _these_ people know he has a Crest, and if they did, he’d be blowing all of their covers, so it doesn’t even fit Sylvain’s usual bad habits—but Felix has never known how to convince Sylvain not to be an idiot, so he has no choice but to let him go. Mercedes does not linger much long after—a room of people in a town like this is full of those in need, and Mercedes's own bad habit is to cut off pieces of herself for anyone who asks the smallest favor. It’s something she has in common with the boar.

_Had_ in common with him.

Felix presses his face into his hands and prays for time to move faster. He just wants to go to his room, check on his weapons, and sleep until he can ride out to their stupid mission.

Unfortunately, a server approaches them before Felix's dreams can come true. Her eyes flicker between Felix, with his scowl and his kicked up legs, and the boar at his back. “Can I… get you anything?” Her eyes flicker back to Felix's legs.

Felix takes his feet off the table. “I don’t need anything. We’re waiting for our room.” Then, deciding it’s better if he speaks for them both, he adds, “Nothing for my husband, either.”

The server glances at the beast in the corner again, alarm written on her face. “That’s your husband?”

“Yes.”

“…He’s not sitting with you?” 

“He dislikes crowds,” Felix says.

“Uh-huh,” says the server. She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, an eyebrow raised. “Uh… You’ve been married a while, then?”

The boar, his eye still shut, intones, “Three moons.” His voice is flat and uninterested, his arms folded. Felix finds his fingers twitching towards becoming fists.

“Oh,” says the server. “That’s surprisingly recent.” 

“We had planned to marry but were separated by the war,” the boar informs her, his fingers drumming against his arm.

Determined not to let the boar to continue to have a hold on their cover story, since _clearly_ he can’t perform any mood that isn’t ‘desperate, broken, and angry,’ Felix straightens up and says, “We’ve known each other since we were children.” 

Despite everything, the server smiles a little. “That’s so sweet,” she says to Felix, who apparently manages to read as more personable than the boar. “Childhood sweethearts, then?”

The answer to that leans on a new addition to the story. The Professor has taken to randomly stopping everyone with extra information for their cover stories ‘just in case,’ which Felix finds frustrating at all times and unforgivably helpful right now.

“No. Not exactly.” Ugh. He hates this. He’s going to get the Professor to add recalcitrance into Yuri’s character profile. “We didn’t act on anything until five years ago. It was shortly after that the war divided us.”

“Oh,” the server says, full of sympathy. Felix can imagine what she’s picturing: childhood friends finally confessing their feelings, only to be divided by the war and reunited years later. Bernadetta would have loved writing something like it. Sylvain would have gushed about it in a ten page letter. “That’s so sad. So how long have you been in love?”

“Since we were eight,” the boar grunts, at the exact same moment Felix says, “Forever.”

Felix hears metal scrape.

The boar’s eye opens. It locks onto Felix. Felix contemplates leaving, changing his name, and becoming a traveling mercenary. 

The server raises both her eyebrows this time. “Uh,” she says.

Felix throws himself to his feet, but the boar says, “Wait,” and that low, quiet growl chains him to his place. It isn't even a moment before the boar pushes off from the wall, stepping around the server and back into place before Felix, completely blocking Felix from the server’s line of sight.

Felix does not register the next boar’s movements, only their consequences—the boar’s palms cupping either side of Felix’s jaw—his fingers curled behind Felix’s ears, dug in against his scalp—his face close, forehead to forehead, nose to nose, the curl of his body a shield between Felix and the rest of the world—

“Do not run.” The warning is warm breath across Felix’s mouth. “Remember on what our survival depends.”

Felix’s eyes widen.

Then, the boar says, low but clear enough to be overheard, “I am sorry, beloved. Forgive me my ignorance of your affections. I would not have left you to languish even a moment had I sooner known the truth.”

Dimitri, Felix reminds himself, is dead.

Dimitri has been dead for a very long time. Felix knows this. Dimitri was burned alive at Duscur, and his body came back possessed by a beast as warped and charred as Glenn’s armor. Dimitri is dead, dead with Glenn, dead with the king and his knights and so many of their friends. Dimitri is dead, and has been dead for ten years, and he’s never, ever coming back so there is no point in trying to find him.

Dimitri is _dead_. 

“_Be still_.”

The hissed reminder is a slap back into awareness of himself: of his hands flat against the boar’s chest, braced to push him away. Of where they are, and their cover story, and how it needs to be maintained. Of how the beast that animates Dimitri’s body is something more than capable of warping anything, even a lie of affection, into weapon and shield.

Felix regains his breath. The strength of the beast’s grip keeps him in a position that would be mistaken as intimate to any prying eyes. 

The server asks, “Should I, like, ask if your room is ready?” 

“Please,” the beast says. 

Even in the chaos of a busy room, Felix ears can track the server’s steps heading away. But his eyes are unable to track anything but the boar’s face. One bright, painfully aware eye catches his own in assessment, then poses a question only in its look.

Felix, just barely, nods his head.

The beast’s grip loosens. Felix doesn’t shove away, and he feels the beast’s grip loosen further still at the confirmation that Felix won’t cause a scene. So Felix takes enough space that he can breathe, but keeps close enough not to shatter the illusion.

The server returns and tells them, “Your rooms are ready! You, uh, go have fun, I guess.” 

“Mind your own business,” Felix snaps as the beast lifts up their bags and walks with Felix to their room. 

The space is small and cramped with no window and only one bed. Immediately on entering the room, the beast drops their bags, draws out a spear, and takes a post on the far side of the room, back to the wall and eye to the door.

Felix doesn’t say anything to it. He sits on the bed, and digs through his things until he finds a sword, and gets to work sharpening the blade. The soft, shivering sound of metal on stone becomes rhythmic, steady. Felix focuses on the edge of his weapon and nothing else. The work keeps him busy, blade after blade, as the beast remains at its post with an eye in a world Felix wants no part of.

That night, Felix’s dreams are plagued by familiar pleas and apologies. “I won’t, I swear it to you. I will not be distracted. Please. I am sorry. We had to survive.” Felix draws his pillow over his head, muffling the whimpering repetition: “I know, I know, I know.” 

The cadence of the beast's suffering is as steady and constant as horses' hooves across a dirt road. After these long moons, it has become almost like a lullaby to guide Felix into sleep. But though he always wakes with no memories of what his sleeping mind has said to him, Felix knows that the rhythm of the boar’s madness does not bring him peaceful dreams.

The next morning, Felix awakens to no murmurs. No breathing.

No beast.

Felix throws the bedsheets off and takes no time to scan the room for confirmation: the boar has left, taking his spear but not their packs. Felix hurriedly dresses enough to get decent, forgetting his hair tie in the process, and practically throws himself downstairs to ask the innkeeper if the boar has left.

“Your husband?” The innkeeper blinks. “Yes, I saw him go out earlier. Did he not tell you?”

It’s too much effort to figure out what makes the most sense for their lie, so Felix doesn’t. He just races to the stables to check if the boar’s horse is there, confirms that it is, and spends the next however long (ten minutes? an hour? his internal clock has turned to nonsense) scouring the town for any hint of the beast. 

Nothing. Nothing anywhere. That, to Felix, presents only one answer.

“Wait! Hey—shit. Yuri! _Wait!_” 

It’s the familiarity of the voice, not a cover name Felix has forgotten, that stops Felix. It’s all Felix can do to stay still for the time it takes Mercedes and Sylvain to stagger to a stop in front of him at the town gates.

“He’s missing, right?” Sylvain’s eyes have that look to them, the sharpness he used to hide so much more before the war forced him to reshape his masks. “We’ll help you look.”

“This is my responsibility,” Felix says, and even as he does he knows he’s not making any sense. “I lost that damned animal, it’s my responsibility to bring him back. I should have known better than to close my eyes on something so irrational, so wild—”

Mercedes takes hold of his hand. 

A healer’s fingers stay soft and dexterous. Unscarred. They grab Felix's attention for one, cool moment. Felix knows Mercedes has killed people, but it has not changed the look of her skin.

“You’ve looked everywhere in the town already, haven’t you?” Mercedes smiles at him. “Let’s go out together.” 

They split up their party—Mercedes and Sylvain together, by Felix’s insistence, and Felix alone, with a promise to loop back and meet up as they expand their search. The forest is loud, a cacophony of birds and rodents and the few larger beasts that have woken for these early weeks of spring. The cold has kept the foliage weak, but the trees still come thick enough that Felix struggles to see far ahead in his search. He doesn’t call out for the boar, and neither do Sylvain or Mercedes. They can’t risk the wrong attention—not for themselves, and not for the only name that the boar might answer to like this.

Then, just as Felix is near to their rendezvous point, breaking through the thinning trees, he hears it: the crash and crack of branches, like a beast lumbering through the undergrowth. The heavy breaths of a wounded thing.

The beast, armed only with a snapped spear and in the traveling clothing it had been wearing last evening, stumbles out of the forest ahead, its hand stemming blood flow at its throat. It’s covered in gore—brain and blood, spattered viscera, mess enough that Felix can’t begin to tell what is the beast’s and what belonged to those the beast has mauled. Its eye looks clouded over, the broken spear serving as a walking stick that it uses to advance towards the town.

Felix throws his sword into the dirt to keep from aiming it at the beast’s head.

“Are you so mad for blood you couldn’t wait a day? Is that what this it?” His throat hurts from how he’s shouting. He knows that if anyone but Sylvain or Mercedes is out here, they’re in for a world of trouble. “It’s not enough that you make my life a misery when you’re at my side. You have to make a mess of it when you leave, too! What the fuck do you think you were doing coming out here?”

The beast’s eye tries to focus on him, but it keeps slipping off to the right, going glassy and distant. The drip of its blood has left a trail in the yellow-green grass. “Better a beast gore fellow monsters,” it says. There is something so sorrowful in how it says it. “Better that I spill the blood of those unfit to keep it in their veins.”

Felix steels himself. Arguing isn’t what matters right now. The beast doesn’t deserve its life, but they need it to keep it. Felix shoves the mess of his unbound hair from his eyes and readies a Recover as he strides forward. “Stay put while I heal you.”

But for the first time, the beast steps away from Felix before he can cast the spell. “Keep back,” it growls, its free hand raised as a bloody and trembling shield. 

This makes no sense. The beast has grown churlish about accepting healing. It has sneered and scoffed at every offer of kindness. But even when it has brushed off direct medical care, it has never outright refused the touch of Faith magic.

Maybe it has truly gone mad. Felix breathes in through his nose, exhales, and tries very hard to be the reasonable one. “Then you’ll die a meaningless death in a place no one will remember. Is that what you want, boar? To die like _this_? I thought you needed to live to answer the demands of your precious corpses.”

“I will not die,” it intones, low as a gutted wolf’s moan. “Not from this. I must live.”

“At least we can agree on that much.” Felix reaches out again, and again the beast jerks away, this time snarling, its bared teeth flecked with blood that could be anyone’s. 

And there’s something else in its expression.

“You must not touch me,” it commands. 

Felix’s laugh sounds hysterical to his own ears. “Incredible. You’ll get your paws all over me to paper over a tear in our cover stories, but you won’t even let me close enough to keep you from a miserable death. You really are a worthless animal, you know that?”

He expects anger. A fight. He doesn’t expect the despairing wail, like a howl to the wind. “I know,” the beast says. _Whimpers_. The hand not keeping its neck in one piece presses to its face, smearing the blood into a flaking, sticky mess. “I know, I know, I know. I’m sorry.” 

Sylvain, crashing through dry winter bushes with Mercedes at his heels, takes one look at them and whispers, “What the fuck.”

“This beast won’t allow me near him.” Felix’s hands shake as he waves towards the dying animal in front of him, the nausea of a bad night and skipped meals making a mess of his muscle control. “Your damned prince is determined to die like the animal he has become, and to the Eternal Flames with the rest of us.” 

Sylvain watches them a moment. Then he strides over toward the beast. The boar gives him a wild look, all cornered animal, and once more bares its teeth.

“Hey there, Your Highness,” Sylvain says, easy smile settled on his lips. “How’s it going?”

The boar snarls, “_Go away_.” 

“Come on,” Sylvain tries again. “Why don’t you let your old friend Sylvain help out?”

“I have no need of friends,” answers the beast. “I need only the head of that woman to appease the dead.”

“Appease the dead, huh,” Sylvain says, thoughtful. He glances over to Felix and Mercedes, then back at the beast. The chill of a Faerghus spring turns his soft exhale into ice in the air. “Okay, sure. Let's talk about them. How are they doing these days, anyway?”

“Don’t encourage that thing’s delusions—” Felix starts, but Sylvain holds a hand up to silence him.

There is a distinct pause. The beast’s head cants, studying Sylvain for a moment. Then, hollow-eyed, it answers him. “They are suffering. Endlessly, they burn, they—” the beast breaks off. Its fingers curl against the wound and Felix wants to lunge forward, but he stops himself. Whatever Sylvain is thinking, he at least has the damned thing staying put. “I fail them.” 

“No, I get that,” Sylvain says. “Murder, revenge, eternal torment until they’re appeased. Got it. But, like, Glenn’s there, right?”

Felix doesn’t realize that Mercedes’s hand is on his arm until he feels her pull him back. Silently, she shakes her head.

“…Yes,” answers the beast, its eye flickering to its right. “Glenn, my father, my stepmother… So many people…”

“Cool,” Sylvain says. “Say hi to them for me, will you?”

The beast freezes.

Blithe as can be, Sylvain says, “It’s been a while, you know? Tell Glenn he still owes me for covering for him that time at Galatea with the apples. You remember that?”

The beast’s mouth opens. Closes. 

“Hey, is Lady Patricia as hot as I remember her?”

This time, Mercedes has to put her hand over Felix’s mouth.

“_Sylvain_,” the boar groans, his free hand pressing into his forehead, plastering hair back with blood. “I don’t—I don’t know, I don’t… see her. She disappeared into the flames.”

Releasing Felix, Mercedes steps up to the place opposite Sylvain, on the boar’s other side. She slips something into the Elixir that has appeared in her hands, but Felix doesn’t know what.

“Drink this, please,” she tells the boar.

“No,” it says. “I don’t need—” 

Sylvain interrupts, “That sucks. About Lady Patricia, I mean. Although I guess you wouldn’t have appreciated how hot she is anyway. What about Astrid? She was at Duscur with you. I remember she had some amazing breasts.”

The boar stares at Sylvain like he can’t quite believe what he’s hearing. Felix frankly feels the same. Mercedes presses the Elixir into the boar’s hands and guides the drink up to his mouth, and he seems so shocked that he drinks it without a fight. Felix can’t tell if it does anything for the injuries, but he more than understands the warm glow that Mercedes is now building in her hands.

“There we go!” Mercedes says, soft and cheerful. “That should help you feel better soon. You’ll need to rest up a little, but it’s for the best.”

“I do not need _rest,_” the boar growls at her, tension running back into him.

“Come on, Your Highness. All those hot lady knights that were at Duscur around you? You need your beauty sleep to impress them.”

“That’s—” The boar can’t quite seem to find the words, looking once more rightwards, this time with a helpless expression that Felix remembers from when they were too young to understand Sylvain’s strange comments and Dimitri used to always look to Glenn for explanations. Then the beast seems to remember what it is now and draws away from them both, spitting, “That’s enough. Cease your farcical prattle.”

Sylvain and Mercedes both step back, Sylvain holding his hands up. “You’ve got it, Your Highness. Though you might want me nearby soon.” 

“What are you talking about?” the boar growls back.

Mercedes quietly tucks her vial away. As she draws back to Felix’s side, she holds up her index finger, mouthing, _One minute_. 

Sure enough, it is not long before boar is swaying on his feet. Instinct or upbringing shoves Felix back to the boar’s side, arm around his back and shoulder bracing his before he knows what he’s doing. The boar doesn’t seem to notice him there on his blind side, his focus still on Sylvain.

“Sylvain,” the boar murmurs, his voice quiet, fragile. (Familiar.)

“Right here, buddy,” Sylvain says, with a smile so casual Felix knows it’s fake. Sylvain slips back into the boar’s space again, over to his left side; he becomes Felix’s mirror, using his strength to keep the boar upright as the drug takes effect. 

“Sylvain,” the boar repeats. He stops then, and says nothing more. Whatever thought he might have had slips away.

After a pause, Sylvain tries, “What do you need, Your Highness?” 

“What I need.” The boar pauses, and Felix can see him refocus. Finding the thread of his thoughts. “Sylvain,” the boar calls a third time. “You must not speak so again to Glenn.” Sylvain’s eyes flicker over to Felix’s briefly, and Felix doesn’t know what he sees in them, but he knows that he doesn’t want it to be there. 

“Don’t worry about it, Mitya. Glenn’s my friend. We get along great.”

“No,” the boar says, quieter still. Like it’s a secret. Like he is once more a child, whispering to his friends behind the backs of the adults. “Glenn has changed. He is not as he used to be.”

“Yeah, yeah, calling for vengeance and blood and Edelgard’s head.” Sylvain sounds like he’d shrug, if he weren’t carrying their shockingly heavy liege lord. “I heard the deal. Don’t worry about it.”

“No.” This time the boar is imploring, like when they were five and Dimitri was trying to make Sylvain understand why he didn’t want to walk back to his quarters alone in the dark. “It is not her. Not only her. It’s my fault,” he tells Sylvain. “Always my fault. I anger him more each time we speak, and even yesterday, unforgivably, to use such things—Sylvain, it was _Felix_—”

“Keep it together, boar,” Felix says, just to make the words stop, and the boar’s head turns quick enough that Sylvain staggers under the shift of weight. “Don't talk about me like I'm not here.”

The boar’s eye widens seeing him. “I...” The beast’s voice drops low, and then it comes: a note, a pleading, that has haunted Felix in his sleep. “Your voice, it had gone, I thought... I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Glenn—”

A hook catches in Felix and pulls.

Felix yanks back and sends Sylvain stumbling under the sudden full weight of the boar. Felix knows he should apologize, move back and brace the beast again, but the way Sylvain looks at him—the way _Dimitri_ does—

“We can’t stay here,” Felix says. “The boar’s too much of a mess for it. I’ll go get our things.” He leaves without waiting to hear anyone call him back.

Felix has to toss off his bloodied cloak and walk in the cold to keep from garnering any suspicion. Still, it doesn’t take long to gather up their things and horses. By the time he returns, hair swept up in a messy equivalent to his usual look, Mercedes and Sylvain have the boar unconscious between them, wrapped up in their traveling cloaks. The sight strikes Felix somewhere in his throat, and for an instant he sees hair the color of corn instead of wheat.

“Oh, hello, Felix,” says Mercedes, and the moment passes. “Welcome back.”

Sylvain and Felix spent a lot of time fighting together during those five long years, and Mercedes has an aptitude for slipping into any space that needs her, so they easily fall into the rhythm of cooperation. Mercedes is assigned the task of getting enough gore off of the beast that it can travel without anyone instantly questioning them, and Felix and Sylvain help Mercedes carry the boar to a nearby stream, still chill with snow melt of the season, before returning to their mounts to reorganize their packs. 

“It’s unbelievable,” Felix tells Sylvain. As per instructions, Felix digs through Mercedes’s for her Concoctions. Her healing did some of the work on the boar, but they’ll need to have these on hand if he’s still argumentative when he comes out of his stupor. “It's utterly unbelievable that your idiotic strategy worked.”

It didn’t help. _Nothing_ can help the boar. But it worked.

Sylvain snorts. “Of course it worked. I broke his script.”

Baffled, Felix looks at him. “Are you going to explain yourself, or do I have to call someone to translate?”

“Everyone has a script, you know?” Sylvain waves his hand around him. Since what surrounds them is half-thawed dirt and weak trees, it isn’t very illustrative of his point. “Everyone’s got this idea of how things are supposed to go. Leave the script alone, and they’ll keep following it, same as always. But if you mess with that script, do something they don’t expect…” 

“Like flirt with their delusions,” Felix says, incredulous.

Sylvain grins at him. “Exactly. His Highness expects us to insult him or argue with him. He didn’t expect me to hit on his ghosts.”

“He should have,” Felix gripes. “You flirt with everything else.”

The sound of Sylvain’s laugh is so off that Felix can’t help but turn. It means he catches the look in Sylvain’s eyes when he says, “Yeah, well, maybe His Highness forgot what I'm like.”

_Fuck_, Felix thinks, _I missed it._ He had seen it in Ingrid, during her one long moon of watch duty. He’d watch it flicker through Ashe like the smashing of a pedestal, Annette like the loss of a brother, Mercedes like a patient who would not be healed. But Sylvain—Sylvain hadn’t said a word about the boar’s state. He’d joked it off. He’d gone out flirting. He had kept his thoughts to himself.

It occurs to Felix, for the first time, that of the three of them who grew up beside their crown prince, Sylvain alone has failed to take watch over him. It occurs to him that he never thought to ask why.

“Sylvain—” he starts, but Sylvain’s frustratingly fake smile is locked back into place, so he ends up snapping, “Hey. Don’t try that on me.”

“Try what?” Sylvain asks, which gets a punch in the shoulder. “Okay, okay,” Sylvain whines, and the smile drops. But when he looks at Felix, Felix isn’t sure he likes the alertness that is in its place. 

“Felix,” Sylvain says. “You know you don’t have to be the one to do this, right?”

This time, Felix knows exactly what Sylvain means. “Right. Because managing the boar on the road is something anyone else could do. I’m sure he and Hilda will make a great couple.” 

“I’m not talking about Hilda,” Sylvain interrupts. “Although, come on. You really think Hilda couldn’t take him?”

“I think she would provoke him, he’d bite back, and we’d have a corpse with an axe through his head instead of the beast we’re all treating like a commander.”

“Wait,” says Sylvain, in the voice he always has when he’s jumping on a stupid idea, “Maybe that was Claude’s plan all along. Things have been real quiet from the Alliance. Maybe he sent Hilda in to slip under our defenses and take out the leader of the Kingdom forces. She’s his honey trap!”

“Please shut up before you come up with any inane ideas. Next you’ll be telling me that Dorothea is Edelgard’s version of the same gambit.”

“If Dorothea was Edelgard’s trap, Dimitri would have been dead moons ago.” Sylvain waves a hand, tossing out that subject of conversation. “Look, that’s not the point. I’m saying you don’t have to carry all of this. I could get His Highness where we need him for fights. So could Ingrid or Mercedes.” 

“No,” Felix says, “none of you can handle him—”

“We can, Felix.” Sylvain looks Felix right in the eyes, and Felix can’t just bite back with his reflex protests. Not when Sylvain is looking at him like that. “And I think, deep down, you know that.” 

Felix’s fingers curl at his side.

A sword. Plate mail. The family resemblance. That damned argument with Gilbert.

How tired he feels whenever he wakes up and remembers where he is.

“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” Felix says. “Mind your own business.”

“Fair enough,” Sylvain breathes out, the sound a poor imitation of laughter. “Can't ask you to buy into something I won't, huh?” 

Before Felix can come up with an answer, Mercedes has called them over to help her move the beast again. Sylvain gets responsibility for riding with the boar, sat unconscious in his arms in the same style their fathers had often used to ride with them when they were too young to travel on their own, and Felix takes responsibility for guiding the boar’s horse. They arrive early enough to the meeting place that the Professor and Mercedes are able to shake the boar out of his drug-induced sleep, and by the time the battle starts, the beast is baying once more for blood. When it's over, the Professor tells them to rest on their ride home, reminding them that they have to fight to take Myrddin Bridge shortly. 

As Felix packs up to return, he catches the beast's eye. Outside of battle, it still seems sluggish. Tired. Its focus flickers again to its right, and for a long moment, it stills.

Felix does not catch Sylvain watching him, but he knows that he does.

On the way home, Felix rides beside the boar on its left side. They don't get into trouble with the weary and dispossessed they encounter on the road back. Without royal cloak or Relic spear, after all, there is no distinction between would-be king and his would-be people. It is easier than Felix likes to think about to slip through the crowds as his shadow and guide.

It’s only later that Felix realizes they make it all the way back to Garreg Mach without ever having to touch once.

At the Battle of Myrddon Bridge, Dedue appears without warning, accompanied by a battalion of Duscur men. Felix is beside the beast when it happens, cutting down an archer in his path. He sees the beast stop, and turn, and call out as if it were a man again. He feels the shift in it as Dedue asks to fight at its side. They take the bridge, with more deaths on the Empire's side than theirs, and Seteth finishes the fight with an unforgiving swing of his axe.

Later, after everyone has mobbed Dedue to welcome him back and Felix's old man has sent the orders for them to settle in, Felix catches a conversation he didn't intend to. It is not that he cares how the boar takes Dedue's return. It is only that Felix was walking by, and he has been trained since he was a child to listen when he hears that voice speak.

The boar and his lapdog talk of debts, long-held desires, desperate survival. A loyal, rabid cur lays its life down in service once more to an even worse animal, and Felix knows from their words that nothing at all has changed.

“And in exchange, I ask that you swear something to me, here and now.” 

There is no audience to perform for here. No cover story. But still, there comes that simple command: 

“Do not ever throw your life away again. Understood?”

In a voice so scraped raw, it sounds nothing like the boy Felix grew up beside. And yet Felix can’t help the stray, treacherous thought: it does not sound like the command of an animal, either.

Felix curls his hands into fists and strides away before he catches Dedue's answer. Felix's father asked for help stationing their men through the stronghold. That is his task, and he needs to get to it.

Felix is here to win a war. He is not here for a losing battle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sylvain’s song is adapted from [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=639hc_F2TZU) possibly familiar jam. I only realized I should have written it as a Breton lai after I had already finished the alliterative verse version, sorry.
> 
> Next time: I don’t know. It’s never what I say it is. I am done pretending.


	5. three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rodrigue and Felix have a conversation. Dedue and Felix have a conversation. Felix and a guy at a checkpoint have a conversation. Dimitri leans into his stepsister’s Targaryen heritage.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: As usual, Felix using dehumanizing language to approach Dimitri, Dimitri's mental health problems, and war being Hell. Felix’s language towards Dedue is unfortunately racially charged, as in the game, although Felix doesn’t really realize this. I muted it heavily in the prose itself, but it is still present there, especially in dialogue.
> 
> There is more on-screen violence in this one. This chapter also involves discussion and threats of human trafficking and human experimentation, as well as discussion of compulsory heterosexuality regarding how Fódlan treats homosexual marriages (basically: acceptable for commoners, not considered appropriate if you’re an heir with a Crest to pass on). There is also mention of vomiting.

With Dedue here, Felix no longer needs to worry about the boar. Dedue is quick to take his old post as watchdog, becoming as much of a constant of the cathedral as the boar himself. And for all that the boar still refuses the comforts of human company, there is no ignoring that Dedue has managed to take a guardian position much closer to that beast than any of the rest of them.

So, Felix isn’t needed. Sylvain will get his way. The next time they travel out, Dedue will play husband to the boar, and Felix will get to travel under another name with another backstory, free of the burden. The prospect sends Felix straight to the training grounds, eager to make use of his free time perfecting his skills. 

“Felix,” says Felix’s old man, right before Felix swings his sword through a practice dummy’s neck.

“I’m busy,” Felix answers. He resumes his stance. “Go bother the boar.”

His old man does not take this as a signal to leave. _Shocking_. “It’s about Prince Dimitri that I want to talk.”

“What, finally ready to admit what he is?” Since his father won’t leave, Felix decides the only thing to do is to continue his training with him present. They’ve long gotten past the point where his father tries to correct his form.

“His Highness is lost, Felix,” his father says.

Felix snorts. He takes a harder swing at the dummy. “He isn’t _lost_, old man. He’s showing his true nature. That’s all.”

“You were very alike as boys, do you recall?” The sigh is so familiar that Felix has to hold back to keep from putting excess force into his swing. “You were both so quick to cry, you more than he, but he would weep in sympathy for you.” 

“You can drop the nostalgia,” Felix snaps. “I have no interest in talking about the past.” Left foot back, right foot forward. Lunge, withdraw.

Felix does not see his father close his eyes. But he knows he does it. “You’ll be sent out with him soon.”

“Don’t be a fool. Isn’t his lapdog back?

“Felix,” his father says, voice heavy with consternation. “There is no need to address Dedue in that manner.”

“It’s what he is,” Felix says. “And now he’ll be able to play the happy couple with his beloved boar master, and I’ll be granted some peace.” 

Felix stabs the dummy through the throat.

“That, I’m afraid, is not the case,” his father says. “Dedue’s situation is complicated by the Kingdom’s current climate. Traveling alongside His Highness would draw unwanted attention and even hostility for them both. The Professor has asked that you accompany His Highness, as usual.”

A vicious wave of satisfaction runs through Felix. He buries it. He isn’t pleased to be most suited to the job; he is just glad to spite that loyal hound. “Fine,” he tells his father. “I’ll do it.”

“They asked that you accompany him on a trip to the Tailtean Plains.”

Felix drops his sword. He rounds on his father, and is horrified to find no sign of a godawful joke.

“We’re going into _Blaiddyd_,” he says.

“To the edge of the territory, but… yes.”

“We can’t go to Blaiddyd.” Felix gestures with the sweep of a hand, the lance of panic making the movement tense and jerky. “We can’t take the boar there. That’s his family’s territory.”

And, as always, Rodrigue Achille Fraldarius gives no response to his son’s distress. “I am aware that it may be an issue,” he answers.

“You’re aware. Well, I’m glad it has reached your _awareness_ for once. But of course you’ll do nothing about it, will you.”

Felix glares his father, grinding his teeth. What he gets in reply is an impassive expression. The sharp cut of his father’s eyes does not reveal a sharpness in his gaze. No matter what Felix says, his father never seems to be willing to truly hit back.

It is something Felix’s father seems to have in common with the boar. At least now the boar is more willing to _show_ his anger.

Felix waits a moment longer, but his father has nothing to give. So he turns around and picks up his sword, and he does not pay any mind to the fact that his father stays there, like a wraith or a sentinel, as Felix works his way through movements he has been drilled on for as far back as his memory goes. Felix continues almost long enough to forget his father is there, absorbed instead in the movement of blade and body.

(He could not ever forget.)

“I am sorry, Felix.”

Felix’s hand freezes.

“I thought that warfare would treat you as it had treated myself and His Majesty. I did not expect this.”

Felix does not turn around to see the face that has spoken these words. He gathers up his strength to form a sneer, and he answers while resuming the swing of his weapon. “You mean that you thought it would turn us into pitiful fools obsessed with ideals that worship death.”

“I do not,” his father corrects. “I mean that I thought it would only take part of you, not consume the whole.”

With a snort of disgust, Felix thrusts his weapon into the dummy’s chest once again, and draws it out to the soft whisper of dry hay. “The boar is the one consumed by war. I’m not.”

“As I said, Felix.” Felix hears his father’s quiet exhale. Little more. “You and His Highness were very alike as boys.” 

It is rare for Felix’s old man to step out of a conversation before Felix can. But any retort Felix might find is suffocated when he sees the slight bow of his father’s head—regret? apology?

Then his father turns away, the fluttering pattern of their crest along the base of his cape the last thing to vanish through the training hall doors.

Traveling is never pleasant, but Felix takes comfort in at least only having to deal with the boar’s company, rather than having to suffer the likes of his father or Gilbert.

That lasts until Dedue appears out of nowhere to walk beside them on the road.

“Dedue,” the boar greets, the low growl of his voice no mask for that warmth that only seems to come out for his resurrected retainer.

“Your Highness,” Dedue says with a bow.

“Where did you even come from?” Felix says without folding his arms. (He is holding the reins of his horse.) 

Dedue does not seem to think this question requires an answer. “The Professor and I determined it would be safe for me to travel with you outside of areas where we were likely to come across others. Is this acceptable to you, Your Highness?”

“Do as you please,” the boar says. He slows his horse to a more reasonable pace.

With a choked growl, Felix rides ahead.

Felix can, if pressed, admit that Dedue is not a terrible traveling companion either. He doesn’t talk, and neither does the boar, so there’s no suffocating chitchat. When they set up camp for the evening, Dedue seamlessly inserts himself into their standard operations, picking up tasks without being asked and helping them finish in half the time. Felix finds himself not particularly required.

It would be a waste of time to linger. This thought is what drives him away from Dedue and the boar and their campsite, off into a nearby clearing where he can get more training in. Steel sword in hand, he repeats the familiar motions and empties out his thoughts into the movement of his body.

It’s only fifteen minutes, maybe twenty, before anyone comes close. The footsteps are weighted, but Felix knows they aren’t the boar’s. They have a different rhythm.

Dedue couldn’t have appeared from nowhere with footsteps like that. This is a declaration.

Felix does not answer it. This is not the first time Felix has gone through forms in front of Dedue, so it shouldn’t be a problem. Except it _is_. Dedue remains there, within sight if only Felix would turn to look at him. All the forgetfulness of exercise vanishes under that watchdog’s unseen eyes.

Felix can’t stand it. At last he turns around, only to be greeted by that damned impassive face that watches him without betraying a hint of what he is feeling.

Felix has always hated that about Dedue.

“What do you want? Shouldn’t you be playing guard for your beastly master?” 

No response, not even to the insult. Instead, those eyes continue to track him. The words Dedue says come out slow and careful, the calm completely without suggestion of artifice. “Then, even after all this time, you remain hostile to him.”

Felix snorts. “And you remain loyal to him, even seeing what he has become.”

Dedue answers, “I have always known what he is. He is a compassionate man, full of more caring than he can hold.”

The idea is so absurd, particularly _now_, that he can’t help but laugh. “He’s a beast craving blood! A damn crazed animal, same as he ever was, and you remain the rabid cur following at his heel.”

Dedue only answers, “In the capital, they call me the same. It is an easy way to diminish the humanity of those you would rather not look at clearly.”

“Shut up,” Felix snaps back. “I’m more than capable of seeing you clearly. You and the boar both. I know you for a bloodthirsty dog. And as for his bloodlust—well.” Felix snorts. “Anyone can see it now. I just saw it first.”

“No.”

“Pardon?”

“No,” Dedue repeats. “You saw it in the rebellion to the west. Seven years ago. Thus, you saw it second. I was the first witness to his hunger for revenge.”

For a moment, Felix does nothing. He stares back at those watchful eyes, and he tries to read something—anything—into them. Into a face scarred by violence, showing all the marks of a violent loyalty. Into a face that even now does not betray anything but a steady faith. 

“Pick up a weapon and spar with me,” Felix says at last. “That, at least, will spare this conversation from being a complete waste in time.”

Without a word, Dedue vanishes—again, he makes noise—and returns with an axe. He also has a handful of Concoctions with him, which Felix realizes is a reasonable precaution but still snorts at.

Felix does not for a moment consider _not_ sparring with steel weapons. It’s not like they brought training swords, after all.

Without word, as is their old habit, they begin. Dedue has always been faster than his size would suggest, hitting with strength more than comparable to the boar’s and much more sound for defence. Felix’s speed makes him a match, but Dedue has changed, too. Improved in how he fights. For a moment, there is only the clash of steel and their breaths as exertion begins to make its mark on them.

But Felix can’t hold his tongue for long.

“I don’t understand it,” Felix says. “You say you want what’s best for him. That you _care_ for him above all others. Yet you allow, _enable_, the wreck that he has become.”

“Do not mistake what His Highness has gone through for what I would wish for him,” Dedue answers. “His Highness would be happiest in a time of peace. Like myself. It is the nature of fate that we have been handed the opposite.”

“Please.” Felix dodges in with a strike; Dedue neatly turns it aside. “You may have the rest of them fooled, with your cooking and gardening and all the other niceties, but I know what you are. You’re just as eager for blood as the boar is.” 

“Again, you are mistaken,” Dedue says. “I am more eager.”

Felix misses a step.

A swing of Dedue’s axe brings Felix’s sword out of his hand; another forces Felix rolling aside to get distance from a swing that, if it had hit, would have cut straight through his shoulder and down into his ribs.

“His Highness is plagued by doubts. This is the root of his sickness. The war in his mind has brought him to this point as surely as the war outside it.” Dedue’s eyes are fixed on Felix. They pin Felix in place, his body braced for movement but unable to chase after his sword. “Unlike His Highness, I have no doubts about my desires.”

Felix curls his lip. “I thought a weapon has no desires of its own.”

“Perhaps you truly do believe I am an animal, if you think I am incapable of growth.”

It’s enough to break Felix free of that gaze. He takes several steps back towards his fallen sword, watching as Dedue shifts his grip on his axe but does not pursue. “So those years separated from the boar have given you some measure of autonomy, and still you insist on following at his heels? Is that what your desire is, cur? To serve him?”

With a sigh, as if he does not expect Felix to understand, Dedue says, “I serve him because I want what he does. His Highness’s desires are my own.”

“So much for growth,” Felix sneers. “Do you want Edelgard’s head too?”

Dedue swings; Felix kicks up his sword and snatches it midair, swinging it up quick enough to block the follow-up strike. It sends aches through his arm and he dodges back again, trying to regain space for his advantage in speed. 

Felix continues, “The boar is a sick enough beast to think the Emperor has something to do with what happened in Duscur, but surely you still have enough reason to know that can’t be the case. Or does it not matter, as long as it’s what your rabid master wants?”

Dedue’s style of combat matches his words: steady and relentless, unshakeable in resolve. 

Felix wants to see him waver. 

“I consider what the Empire is doing abhorrent,” Dedue answers. “For what the Emperor has done to His Highness alone, I would want revenge. But to His Highness, it is the Empire’s deeds towards Faerghus itself that are unforgivable. Such violent conquest destroys the worlds of those who suffer under it. His Highness, who has suffered in a similar way, does not wish this suffering upon others.”

Felix scoffs, dodging back from another strike. “Don’t read idealistic motives into him. I thought you knew him better than the rest of us.” The sneer is accompanied by a swing of his blade, easily met. “The boar is in this for revenge, nothing else. He isn’t here to spare anyone suffering.”

“You misconstrue the situation,” Dedue says. “Revenge and salvation can be the same thing.” 

“They can’t,” Felix says. The blade of Dedue’s axe catches across the edge of Felix’s sword, and in the sparks that fly Felix lunges forward. Dedue blocks the strike on the flat of his axe but has no space to attack back. “You want to talk about worlds ending? Fine. How many worlds will you and the boar destroy in pursuit of your revenge? How much _suffering_ are you willing to create in the name of your cause?”

Felix gets his sword under the guard of Dedue’s axe. He twists; Dedue’s axe slips from his grip. Dedue moves for his weapon but with the advantage of speed, Felix is easily in his way, and he slams one foot on the hilt to keep it in the dirt.

“I do not understand you,” Dedue says. “You disagree with the aim of your commander. Yet you still fight under his banner.”

“My blade hungers for strong opponents. That’s all. I don’t care if it’s the Emperor or anyone else.”

“Then you fight for the challenge?”

“I fight to grow strong, and I grow strong to survive. It isn’t senseless bloodshed. It has a _purpose_.”

Dedue says, “This is a poor excuse.” 

Felix stills.

Dedue continues, “There are many who cannot escape this war. The poor, the unskilled, the conscripted. You are none of these. You may readily leave. This makes your purpose meaningless and your search for strength the bloodthirstiness you accuse myself and His Highness of.”

“_It has a purpose_,” Felix snarls. He does not raise his blade to Dedue’s throat. “What you’re doing is _sick_. You value one life above thousands. You would sacrifice anything, any number of ‘worlds,’ for one man. My aim is to protect my people, but you? You’re following a beast that barely remembers how to speak, and to the Eternal Flames with everyone else.”

_There_. There comes the frown. At least, Felix thinks, he can always count on the dog to get its hackles up when its master is insulted. 

Dedue says, “You do not understand what his Highness means to myself and my people.” 

Then he stops. And when he looks at Felix, Felix is struck with the familiar feeling of being measured and found to lack.

He can see the change in tactics as surely as on a battlefield. “I protect you because you matter to His Highness,” Dedue says. “I protect our former classmates because they matter to me. All others in this army, I protect because our fighting strength must not be depleted. I wish you to understand this distinction.” 

This time, when Dedue makes to move past Felix, Felix does not stop him. He turns with Dedue’s movement, so that his back is not to him, and steps off the hilt of the blade. He watches Dedue draw the axe from the dirt.

Dedue says, “Should all the soldiers in this war die, it would be the end of the worlds of many individuals. By numbers alone, this would be a tragedy. Yet above all, this remains the truth: no matter how many soldiers of Fódlan die, it is nothing compared to the devastation your people brought upon mine, for there would still be countless left to preserve your cultures and your histories. Duscur was not granted this.”

Dedue inclines his head briefly. “Thank you for the match. I must return to His Highness now.”

Felix does not return to their camp for another hour. By then, the boar has taken up his traditional post at the edge of the light, his eye fixed on something only he can see in the woods. Dedue sits a short distance from him, legs folded and eyes shut. Felix can tell he is still awake, ever the loyal guard dog, loyal enough to let Dimitri be a beast. For his own reasons.

Lying in his bedroll, unable to find rest, he tries to imagine it. He searches through all he knows of Dedue and the boar and seeks out what more than mere revenge might bind them. The boar saved Dedue’s life. He treats him with respect in a country that doesn't. Felix knows all that.

And yet when he tries to conjure up what other thing there could be, the words Dedue has left unsaid, he cannot. That is part of a world he does not know how to reach. 

When they turn back onto the main roads, Dedue vanishes, and Felix doesn’t know where to. It leaves Felix feeling as if they’re being watched. Even as they reach a Dukedom checkpoint, that sense that Dedue must be _somewhere_ lingers at the back of his head. 

Felix must put it out of mind. The boar has always been disgustingly deft at making it through these checkpoints, but Felix will not take the risk of carelessness undoing them on this one.

He buries their weapons deep (though no one really cares these days, as long as it’s clear they’re for self-defence and not the smuggling operation of an army) and falls into step beside the boar, who lowers his head. The mess of his hair masks the missing eye; the slouch of his posture disguises whatever traces of regal upbringing might be left after his years as a beast. The checkpoint itself doesn’t seem particularly stringent, however, its barricade a haphazard mass of wood that seems pulled from other structures and its soldiers slovenly in armor dirty and dented.

That’s when, looking at the face underneath a Dukedom helmet, Felix sees Emil Behrend, son of a Fraldarius knight who had left the family’s service more than a decade ago. Emil Behrend, who used to play with Felix when he was a child, and Dimitri on more than one occasion.

Felix says, “We need to reroute.” The boar responds to his tension immediately and with a tug on his horse’s reins is already pulling away.

“Felix?” 

Felix freezes. He does not look over towards Emil. 

“Felix, my man! Is that you?”

Emil breaks away from the rest of the soldiers there, and when Felix has to face him he finds a smile as companionable as it is disgustingly bright. No doubt of the attention running would bring, the boar remains perfectly still, but Emil doesn’t spare him a glance. All of his attention is fixed on Felix.

“It _is_ you!” Emil exclaims. “You’ve changed a lot, but there’s no mistaking those Fraldarius features. You look just like—”

“Don’t,” Felix says.

Emil laughs it off. “Sorry. Sorry, buddy. I forgot.” He pauses, then, and Felix can see the realization strike. “Hang on a second—” 

“I abandoned my title.” 

The words stumble out of Felix’s mouth as quick as he can think them, and maybe he’s not the best liar, but he can hardly rely on the boar for this one. There is no lie that can protect a fugitive prince’s presence, but Felix may be able to salvage himself as a nobleman deserting his post.

He continues, “I’m a mercenary now.” 

Emil says, “You’re kidding me. What about your father?”

“My father,” Felix sneers, “is a fool, obsessed with chivalry and honor and a dead king. My father doesn’t care for me except to have a shield to throw between the boar prince and death. With the boar dead—” His breath catches in his throat. Felix swallows, then continues. “I didn’t care for the life he would have had for me. So I left it.”

“I was sorry to hear about His Highness,” Emil says, voice softer. A stupid thing for a Dukedom soldier to say, but there aren’t many around. “You two were always close—” 

“We weren’t. Not for years.”

For a moment, Felix experiences scrutiny that overwhelms all his training to keep eye contact. Then Emil lets his gaze go. “Got it,” Emil says. “Okay then, so who’s your friend?”

Emil looks at the boar directly. He sees him, all of him. His corn-silk hair, his midwinter eye, the Blaiddyd cut of the jaw and line of the nose. And yet, for all that Emil’s eyes sparked in recognition of Felix, there is no such response to the Crown Prince of Faerghus stood before him.

Felix knows why. Emil’s father was a Fraldarius man, not a Blaiddyd knight. He spent much more time near Felix than Dimitri and likely never saw the old king in person. And the boar is not the child that Emil met a handful of times one decade back.

Still. Felix swallows back nausea. 

Felix says, “This is—my husband. Richard.” He pauses. “We got married after I left.”

“Damn!” Emil exclaims. “You really did give it all up. I’m impressed, Felix. I didn’t think you’d leave it all behind for love.”

The reminder sends a prick of unease down over his shoulders. Felix quickly suffocates the ugly, pointless thought. “Hmph. It wasn’t _for_ love. There was merely no need to concern myself with heirs without a territory, so I did as I pleased.”

“Sure,” Emil says, and then adds, “You really do have a type, huh.”

“Shut up. What are you talking about?” Felix folds his arms. “I don’t have a _type_.” 

Emil grins. “Blonds.” 

Felix considers murder.

“Are we done here?” he asks. 

“I’ve still got a job to do,” Emil reminds him, and Felix has to keep his focus ahead instead of looking towards the boar with much more nerves than before. Emil asks with the bored tone of an underpaid civil servant, “Where are you going?”

“We’re heading north, towards the Tailtean Plains.”

“Yikes,” Emil says. “Be careful around there. I hear there are a lot of monsters out. Why are you heading that way?”

Felix answers, “Richard has family there.”

“Must be nice.” Emil smiles, and he nods his head towards the fork in the road a quarter mile ahead. The western route is barricaded by wood as old and recycled-looking as the kind that marks this Dukedom blockade. “The western road’s pretty badly flooded, so you’re better off going east. But watch your backs. This place has been hit hard by the war, so there’s a lot of banditry.”

Felix snorts. Since it’s Emil, there’s no harm in a careless, “Bandits won’t be an issue for me.”

“You never know,” Emil says. “Travel safe, you two.”

They break away, the boar ever silent, his head still low. When they reach the fork in the road, Felix looks further down the path. The collapsed trees he sees further down are passable, but even the boar’s monstrous strength could do nothing against a flooded road.

Felix glances at the boar. “Will your dog be able to follow us if we take the east road?”

The boar’s eye narrows. “Dedue,” he says, his enunciation careful, “will find us. He knows how to travel this country unseen better than any.”

They do not talk about Emil. Felix does not ask if the boar remembers him, or if that thought has been consigned to the flames with the boy the boar once was. Felix, too, leaves behind the old memories, and marches deeper into the crown lands with their dethroned king.

War and bad weather have made towns in Faerghus very similar to each other, marked by high stone walls quarried out of a land richer in mountainous regions than in forests. This similarity can make for uncanniness in a traveler’s experiences as the differences jar at the senses. Felix is used to it.

This is not that feeling. 

Felix walks alongside the boar down the town center, both of them on the inside of a bracket made by their horses. It isn’t how they first walked in. But the further they got in—the more they saw of the quiet—the more they shifted, until the boar had outright switched positions to stand at Felix’s side. Felix casually undoes the button on the pack that contains his swords. The boar does not do the same with his lances, but he does not need to. 

There is something of a market in place, but it’s smaller than would be expected for a town this size, and few people are in it. Most of those Felix can see are barely out of their youths, old enough to fight and young enough that they are unlikely to survive battle. 

Nausea roils through his stomach, warning him not to relax. He lowers his voice. “Boar.”

The boar’s eye flickers over to him, and it only takes a moment of looking before he answers, “We will make camp outside.”

Walls are often an advantage, but it will be more of an advantage still to be outside these gates rather than within them. They both know what they have to do.

“Go back to the forest with the horses,” Felix says. “I’ll get our supplies and join you shortly.” He offers the horse’s reins to the boar.

The boar does nothing for a moment. It is no churlish disobedience; this is hardly the first time Felix has taken the lead on what path they should take, and the boar frankly seems to prefer not to have make decisions about anything that isn’t his quest for revenge. Felix has no idea what brings the boar pause now.

Then, at last, the boar delivers a command in that low, surly voice of his: “Do not keep me waiting.” The boar reaches past him and detaches Felix’s pack—the one with the swords—from his horse. He holds it out to him. 

Felix snatches it out of his hand, attempting and failing to put venom in his answer: “Impatient for blood again, boar?” 

The boar only glances past him, back into this strange and quiet city. A city he might rule. A city where he is unrecognizable. “Mind your back,” the boar says, “if you do not care to find a blade in it.”

“I’m not an idiot,” Felix snaps. “I can tell something is wrong.” But the boar is as unresponsive as ever as he draws away and guides the horses back through the town gates. The two men posted watch the boar walk out, and Felix wonders if leaving him alone was a good idea. Dedue is still around though, supposedly; there is no way the boar’s hound would fail to find him if it comes to trouble. 

A sharp breath of air does little to steel his stomach, not when spring has brought the country out of frost and into a mild chill. Felix throws his pack over his shoulder, leaving his blade in easy reach, and searches for a merchant with which he can trade.

He has little luck. The town is too poor in resources, worn down by the war and Cornelia’s mismanagement. Locals can barely feed themselves, they tell him, There is very little to be picked up for a pair of hungry horses. A merchant sighs, “We have no young men and women to harvest our fields. They are too busy dying in them.”

“Not all of them,” Felix answers, his eyes flickering back to the pair of youths who have shadowed his every step since he got there. They linger at the outskirts of this market square. 

The old woman’s voice quiets. “You should accept your losses and get going, young man.”

“Hmph. You might be right.” He steps back from the stall and digs into his pack, careful not to disturb where his sword has been tucked for easy reach. “I’ll take what apples you have, then,” he says.

Felix thinks, _Amateurs_, and grabs the hilt of his blade, drawing it out across the arms of the first of the attackers. The man screams, drawing his bloodied arms back against his chest, but Felix doesn’t bother except to point his weapon at the second of them.

“Be gone, or it will be more than a few cuts for the both of you,” he says. He takes a few steps back, not wanting to throw himself into the center of the square but not eager to trap himself between two opponents either. If it’s just the two of them, it should be manageable, but Felix has his suspicions. 

“Shit,” says the second. The one _not_ currently bleeding. “But you can’t change how you talk, huh?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” 

Felix’s instincts are saying _run run run_. It isn’t far to the gates. If the boar is waiting with the horses, they can get out of here before any pursuit is possible. He and the boar will seem too poor a pair of marks to be worth the chase.

“It means,” says a third party, and Felix repositions himself again, tracking the newcomer, “that a highborn son’s education always shines through, no matter what clothes he puts on.”

When Felix looks back to the gates, he sees nothing but crossed metal bars.

Damn.

So Felix lunges for the kill. He is the fastest in their class, and these are only simple bandits, so it shouldn’t be an issue. No one wants to die, after all, and that breeds wariness that lets him cut them down one by one. Two die before they can scream.

Then he hears, “Felix!” and the voice is so familiar that he turns. It’s the mistake that has his weapon knocked out of his hand, and a body knocked against his, and Felix can fight unarmed but he can do very little on the ground.

Back to cold stone, vision spinning, Felix looks up at the once familiar face of Emil Behrend. He growls and lashes out, and when hands get around his throat he digs his fingernails into the flesh, kicks up from where he’s pinned down, trying to strike a weak point, to make the enemy _let go_.

“Felix,” Emil says. Is Felix delirious from suffocation, or is there a note of pity in that voice? “When did you turn into such a beast?”

Felix tries to tell Emil to go fuck himself. But there isn’t much air left for breathing, let alone cursing. Someone steps on his sword hand, and Felix’s last thought before he loses consciousness is that he needs to get to a healer or he will have no use to him at all.

Felix’s hand hurts like a bitch, but that won’t stop him from strangling someone first chance he gets.

Instinct tells Felix to open his eyes and get moving. Felix suspects that, if only this time, his instincts are mistaken. Eyes shut, forcing his breathing not to change, he tries to get measure of his status.

His limbs feel tight. It’s difficult to notice much about them under the blooming soreness or the ache every time he tries to breathe, but if he sinks into the feeling—yes. A bite around his wrists. That has to be some kind of binding. Rope, probably, in a town this poor, but his hand aches too deeply for him to make any effort to judge the texture of whatever it is digging into his skin. He can’t feel anything at his ankles, but he isn’t going to risk movement to find out. The surface under his back feels like wood, not stone, which likely means somewhere indoors. The light, too weak to be anything but candlelight, suggests indoors _and_ after nightfall.

He can infer the basics of his situation. _Now_ Felix’s instincts tell him to throw as much of his strength into snapping these binds as he can, and damn the consequences, but that would be a fool’s path forward, and Felix is not a fool.

A stranger’s voice comes distantly, not as if through a wall but in another room. An open door into a hall, perhaps? “There’s no sign of the husband?”

Felix takes a moment to curse this stupid cover story. 

The next voice is unpalatably familiar. “Nah,” Emil says, still a lazy, casual air to his voice. “He managed to vanish into the woods somehow. It’s a waste of time pursuing him, anyway; Fraldarius here is the prize.”

Felix then takes a moment to be furious that the cover story is useful.

Footsteps approach. Felix keeps his eyes closed and does not react, not even when a boot nudges his stomach.

“Come on, Felix,” says Emil, a warmth that Felix finds uncharitably sincere. “No point pretending. You get all tense the second you wake up.”

Felix does not grit his teeth. That would be proving the point.

He suffers a much harder kick and resists a grunt in response, but the third strike has him gasping, his breath making his bruised windpipes ache. Felix’s eyes snap open despite himself, so he growls up into the looming face of his former playmate and friend.

“What do you think you’re doing, Emil?”

“Sorry, Felix,” Emil says, neck tilted to look down into Felix’s face. “But it’s war.”

“War,” Felix says, “is about killing people. This is nothing to do with war.”

Of all possible responses, Emil laughs at him. Seemingly tired of craning his neck like that, Emil crouches down, curved at the side of Felix’s head. It does not particularly make Felix’s position more comfortable. “War is about not getting _yourself_ killed. They must really twist up you noble kids to make you think different.”

Felix huffs, unable to repress his exasperation. He tests the bonds at his legs now and gets nothing but tension at his ankles for his trouble. “How is this survival?” Felix asks. “Does the Dukedom take prisoners now?”

“Sometimes,” Emil replies. “But come on, Felix. You can’t still think I’m a Dukedom soldier.”

Felix reflects on the checkpoint. On its haphazard build, the slovenliness of its men. The same slovenliness he saw in the men in the town—a town of people too young to still be here, here in the middle of a war that will pick up any able body to throw into its bloody maw.

Felix’s eyes narrow. “You’re bandits. This entire thing—the checkpoint, the forked road, all of it. It’s a trap.”

And Emil laughs in answer. “There you go! You never had a talent for deception, but I knew you’d get there in the end.”

Felix snarls and strains against his ropes. There is little leverage like this; a burst of his Crest might be enough to break the binding, but Felix can’t be certain, and he won’t make the mistake of moving until he knows what is happening. 

_Then_, though—then there will be blood.

“Fine,” Felix hisses. “So you’ve sunk low enough for banditry. Bandits don’t take prisoners, either—”

Felix closes his mouth. _No._

To that, Emil only smiles. “Don’t worry, Felix. You’re an old friend. We’ll try ransoming you to your old man first.”

This would not be a bad outcome. Felix knows this. His father is in Garreg Mach, where Felix needs to be, and he has suffered more in his life than this experience could bring upon him. 

He has no intentions of letting it get to that.

“I told you,” Felix snaps back at him, “I left my family. There is no value left in keeping me.”

Emil just rolls his eyes at that. “Come on, Felix. I remember Duke Fraldarius. Your old man isn’t hard-hearted enough not to want his only surviving son back.” Emil cants his head and adds, “Now, if you’d betrayed the Kingdom, maybe that’d be something, but then he would probably want you back to execute you himself.”

Felix does not dwell on the truth of those words. He answers instead, “And so he would want nothing to do with a son who chose a path of neutrality. I’m nothing to my father now.”

But Emil only shrugs and tells him, “If he doesn’t, no problem. We’ll hand you over to Cornelia instead.”

“What?” Felix is feeling the strain at his wrists and legs before he realizes he’s struggling. He grits his teeth at the pain, but Emil does nothing to stop his movements. “_No_. Cornelia has no need for a noble son who has left his title behind.”

“That would be the case for another highborn son, sure,” Emil says. “But you, Felix—you have one of the only Major Crests in Fódlan.”

Felix stops struggling.

After a breath, his voice hot in his throat, he spits out, “_So what?_”

“You really are out of the loop, aren’t you?” Emil gets to his feet, striding around the room. Now Felix gets the full sense of it: old wood for the walls and floors. No furniture, but not the look of a storage space. Perhaps an empty room in an old home. 

“I told you,” Felix says, “I left everything behind.” 

“Still, a mercenary should keep up on this kind of thing.”

Near the door, Emil stops, glancing out into the hallway. Felix tries to shift position, getting himself more upright. This position is making him nauseous. He can hear other voices, conversation and laughter, out in the halls.

Emil says, “They’ll pay a lot in Fhirdiad for bastard sons and daughters with even a drop of Crest-bearer’s blood in them. And the ones who have Crests? Oh, boy.” He glances back over his shoulder at Felix, and Felix finds himself locked into meeting his eyes. “No one’s dragged in a Major Crest bearer yet, but I bet the price is enough to keep us alive through the rest of this worthless war.”

Felix remembers Emil when he was a boy. He remembers Emil at the training grounds, practicing lance work with him alongside the other soldiers’ children their age. He remembers the group of them gathering together to skip stones on Fraldarius Castle’s largest lake, just after the first spring thaw. He remembers playing knights and dragons in the stable yards.

“You’re an animal,” Felix tells him. “You’re _worse_. This makes you less than a beast.” 

But Emil only watches him, and shakes his head as if Felix is letting him down. “I’m what Faerghus raised me to be. I fight, I kill, and I survive. Just like they say you did, until you vanished from the Dukedom–Kingdom frontlines four months ago.”

“Is that how you justify this? Not just killing and banditry, but trading in human lives?” 

If anything, Emil looks amused. “You think the trading is worse than killing?”

“_Of course I do._ Who knows what happens to the people Cornelia takes? Who knows what happens to any other life you sell to the highest bidder?” 

“That’s a very chivalrous perspective,” Emil tells him. “Marcus and Kocis wouldn’t agree.”

Felix stares, trying to place the names. Children they played with once? Other sons of Fraldarius men at arms, second sons Felix cannot now recall?

The smile Emil wears is like one of Sylvain’s. The kind Sylvain is wearing when he is looking at a woman he is particularly looking forward to leaving in the dirt. “Those are the names of the men you killed today, Felix. They would have done anything to survive, and they had a lot of friends. Myself included.”

“You started this,” Felix says.

“Doesn’t make it hurt any less,” Emil answers. “Lucky you, your title and Crest make you worth keeping around.”

That is the moment when an explosion rocks the building, and the One-Eyed Demon of Garreg Mach breaks into the room wreathed in flames.

Emil spins around to face the beast. Felix jerks back on instinct but the flare of his Crest is only enough to break the bindings at his wrists. As he struggles to unbind his legs with one broken hand, Emil reaches for a sword at his hip and the beast prowls towards him, the wildness of his expression heightened by the erratic flickering of the fire. 

“To think,” says the beast, voice clear even in the roar of the fire, “that the boy we once skipped stones with would become such a despicable breed of vermin. I shall do that child the service of ending your miserable life.”

Felix can see it: the moment of recognition. The shock that freezes Emil in his place, and so forfeits his life. “Prince Dimitri?”

“Only his corpse,” snarls the beast, and lunges to the kill.

Felix tries to move, tries to _fight_, but the movement knocks him out of balance and when he hears motion behind him he turns, only to catch sight of a familiar face with still-unfamiliar scarring. 

“I will free you,” Dedue says. “Be still.” Dedue kneels in front of him and brings a sword to bear on the ropes there. All around them, Felix hears screaming men, clanging metal, burning wood.

Felix ignores the ache in his hand as he reaches for his sword, but he finds the weapon drawn back and a Concoction put in its place. Though the beast roars ahead of them and the fire all around, Dedue remains there and watches Felix down the drink, then offers him the sword once more. Dedue is gone the moment he has it, splitting enemy forces from the beast as more bandits come to join in the fight.

Their commander, if that’s what Emil is, can no longer lead them. Even in the fire and smoke, Felix can tell that it is Emil pinned to the wall by the boar’s spear. He doesn’t look dead yet, but there is no saving him from an injury so gruesome.

_Weak_, Felix thinks, and throws himself into the mess of blades and bodies dancing amidst the flames. There is no strength to be gained from such weak opponents, but they must be fought. So Felix fights, and Felix kills, taking post down the hall that proves to be an exit and striking down lives as they come to him.

Felix hears the beast laughing, high and terrible, and he does not need to see to imagine the brutality that leaves men screaming as if from a pain they can't comprehend. Dedue ends the screaming and the beast moves on: another corpse to stack atop other corpses, and all to be eaten by the fire.

A youth runs to Felix to escape the building. Felix thrusts his blade through his throat. As the blood spatters, Felix’s mind supplies to him a simple calculation: the boy would have been no more than fifteen when war broke out.

Dizziness overtakes Felix. The smoke. He looks up with blurry eyes to see Dedue take a hold on the beast and draw him away from the flames. They escape together out a flung-open door, and Felix does not need to glance back to recognize that it really is just some abandoned old house, one of the same design you’d see anywhere in the Kingdom.

It occurs to Felix, as they run towards the town gates, that Emil may still be alive in there. His wound is the kind that brings a slow and toxic death. But the smoke will choke him long before that happens, and the fire will take him if the smoke does not.

Felix’s sword hand aches. It’s the half-healed fractures, nothing more.

Then they are outside the town, just the three of them, the fire a warm glow behind them. A winter hearth to ward against the cold. 

“The horses are ahead,” Dedue says.

Felix snarls, “What was that?” His hands are shaking. Dedue reaches for another Concoction but Felix slaps it away.

“His Highness was concerned when you did not meet up with us again,” Dedue says. “When we ascertained the situation, we determined a distraction would be necessary to handle the numbers—”

“I’m not talking to you,” Felix spits. “I’m asking the boar what it thinks it was doing in there.”

It’s that smile. The smile that even now only sometimes crosses the beast’s lips. The smile Felix saw at the Holy Tomb. Remire Village.

The rebellion.

Whenever Felix sees it, his stomach lurches, and his lungs are filled with the sickening scent of fire mingled with blood.

“They were beasts,” that smile says to him. “Monsters. I offered them the only death such animals deserved.”

Felix does not know why it happens, or how it overtakes him. He merely stands there, still choking on the smoke fed by their violence, until all at once he is laughing—laughing despite the ache in his throat, laughing despite the poison in his lungs. He laughs and laughs, until he is on his knees, and then he laughs until he vomits in the forest grass.

Somewhere above him, he hears the beast’s guttural utterances in their mimicry of human speech. Then the beast is gone, and Felix is alone, kneeling in the dirt, gasping for breath.

He really did like Emil once. He can’t stop thinking, _How disappointing._ If only Emil were stronger.

Then at least Felix might gain something from this slaughter.

Felix doesn’t hear Dedue moving closer to him. He only realizes it must be the case when he hears Dedue’s voice.

“That man you abhor is the one who rescued me when my world was destroyed,” Dedue says. “I have rebuilt much of my world since then, thanks both to my countrymen and to my companions at Garreg Mach. But without His Highness, I would not have made it to this moment.”

Felix breathes. He tries to, anyway. He tries to fight the pounding in his head. “He’s still a damned animal. The way he kills—it’s bloodthirsty. Monstrous.”

Felix does not need to look up from the dirt to know he is being studied. He has always had a good intuition for when he is being watched. When Dedue speaks again, Felix can read nothing in his voice but that unforgivable, unshakeable calm.

“You did not have anyone to offer you a hand when your world was destroyed,” Dedue says. “I pity you for that.”

“I don’t want your pity.” An awful cough shakes out of Felix. He gasps for air. “And my world wasn’t—I didn’t—” 

Felix still tastes vomit and smoke and viscera. He shuts his eyes and digs his finger into the cold grass and breathes.

“Shut up,” he says. “Go see to it that your boar master is unharmed. We need to move before anyone else comes to find us.”

Silence.

“Very well.”

This time, Felix does not hear it when Dedue walks away.

Kneeling there, hands in the dirt, Felix heaves with the memory of that town that could have been any other in the Kingdom. He hears Emil’s words repeated in his head.

His hand still aches.

Perhaps his father was right. Perhaps, after everything, what Felix has been left with—

It doesn’t matter. Felix vows to himself to never tell his father he had a point, not under any circumstances. This particular epiphany is one that Felix is taking with him to his grave.

One week later, Gronder Field burns. After that, Felix doesn't have to worry about telling his father anything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We are now past the halfway point and into the post-Gronder stages of this fic. Felix might finally be ready to face stages of character development other than his constant loop of denial and resistance! Sylvain and Mercedes’s next cover song: “Epiphany.” 
> 
> Thanks to [amorekay](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21183548/) for the beta on this chapter. I think I would have perished if I had to read this thing one more time. 
> 
> I’m on twitter @[marezafic](https://twitter.com/marezafic) if you like fe3h retweets, random meta and aus, me complaining about Felix pov, and, very occasionally, a tweeted fic.
> 
> UPDATE (Feb 29). The first draft of the next chapter is done! It is now being edited so it isn't a garbage first draft!


	6. four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Felix gets a hug. Annette explains sharks. Dorothea offers acting direction. Dimitri and Felix sit down at a table.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: Felix’s grieving process is hard on display. People try helping, but to mixed effect, and at various levels of skill. Felix actively tries to be better about the dehumanization thing but slips up a bit. There is again the implication of compulsory heterosexuality in specific contexts. There is also some unreciprocated flirting/physical contact, but the recipient isn’t uncomfortable with it.

When Felix was thirteen—

No.

When Felix’s world ended, and he was only coming to learn it one piece at a time, he had an argument with his father. This was after he had lost Glenn, but before he knew he had lost Dimitri. It was the moment that the piece of his world that was his father was ripped away.

Felix still knew how to cry, then. They were in the capital, because Felix’s father rode to Dimitri the moment news of his survival had come, and Felix had begged to come with him as soon as travel would allow. Perhaps his father hadn’t wanted to be parted from his only surviving son, because Rodrigue agreed, but the doctors were insistent and wouldn’t let Felix in to see Dimitri when his father went. So Felix kept mostly to his rooms and waited for Ingrid and Sylvain to join them.

Felix did not eat a lot over those weeks. It worried his father, but Felix didn’t feel like he could. One evening, long past when Felix should have been asleep, his father came in with a tray of food. It had been all day since Felix had seen his father—it felt like longer—because his father had been busy making arrangements for the injured prince. He remembers hearing whispers about arguments between his father and Dimitri’s uncle and Cornelia, rumors that the adults were fighting over where it would be best to raise the prince and who was most suited to the duty. But it was dark, so if that was true, Felix hadn’t seen it on his father’s face.

Instead, Felix’s father had sat with him and brushed away his tears. He had joked with him, and even though Felix could see how tired his father was, the jokes made it a little easier to eat.

Then, his father, who Felix had always known was wise and kind and strong, said, “We must remember to take comfort and not shirk aside Glenn’s greatest pride, my son.”

He tucked a strand of Felix’s hair behind his ear. His voice was soothing, his gesture gentle.

Felix’s father said, “He died like a true knight.”

Felix doesn’t remember much of what happened next. He remembers standing up. He remembers shouting and screaming. He remembers that his father had never raised his voice, not in anger, not even once.

He remembers that his father’s expression had gone completely blank, after Felix struck him across the face.

Felix’s father stood completely still. He touched his fingers to his cheek, lightly, as if to confirm what his senses told him. And he watched Felix with eyes that didn’t seem to see him—but now, Felix wonders, was that what it was? Or was it an emotion that Felix did not then know how to recognize?

His father had said, in a voice no louder than that he had used to speak of Glenn’s death, that they would speak again later. Then he left. That, Felix thinks, must have been the last time he ever cried.

At the least, Felix can’t remember crying after that.

From as long as Fhirdiad Castle has stood, the Fraldariuses have always been assigned the same rooms, a suite close to the royal chambers granted only to the family most loved and trusted by the crown. There is a master chamber for the ruling Duke or Duchess, resplendent and luxurious, with private office and sitting room decked out in all the family heraldry. There is a second bedroom, slightly smaller, for the Fraldarius heir, lacking an office but possessing a study and a sitting room ideal for the minor negotiations that might be trusted to a young heir in need of practice. There is, at last, a set of assorted extra rooms, no less adorned in the finest of cloth and woodwork the kingdom has to offer, but without the trappings of official business, meant for all of the sons and daughters of Fraldarius not expected to inherit their lands and obligations. But even these, the children not meant to rule, are given a place here. It has been as such always.

After they retake Fhirdiad, Felix stays in the room he has had since long before he turned thirteen.

In theory, Felix and Dimitri are on their way to mending their relationship. In theory, this should be better now. Felix doesn’t always look at Dimitri and see an animal, and Dimitri doesn’t always look at Felix and try to hide one or the other side of himself. It is as Dimitri said: both are Dimitri. They’re coming to understand what that means for them.

Or at least they would be, if they weren’t avoiding each other.

“We need to take a mission on the Brionic Plateau,” the Professor says, stopping Felix in the entrance hall of Fhirdiad Castle.

The last time they had taken on any missions had been just before the march to Fhirdiad. The Professor had sat them all down and gone through everyone’s cover stories, once again adding extra details, and Ingrid finally broke down and asked, “Professor, what is _your_ cover story?”

“I’m traveling disguised as a former Professor from Garreg Mach,” the Professor had told them. “My name is Bloe.”

“What,” Ingrid had said.

The Professor had nodded to themselves, taken a piece of paper, and written out the name “B-L-O-E” in capital letters. “Chloe, with a B.”

“But that’s just—” said Ingrid, and then stopped. She tried again. “I thought I was Chloe?”

“That’s why it has a ‘B,’” the Professor had explained, not unkindly. “Please pay attention in war council, Ingrid.”

They had all agreed, afterwards, to just assume that the Professor meant everything they said.

“What?” Felix asks, forgetting their collective agreement. “Is this a joke? We have a letter from the Alliance asking us to rescue them. How do we have the time to go to the Brionac Plateau?”

“The main army is heading to the Alliance,” Byleth says, as if they are a very reasonable person. “We need to go to the Brioniac Plateau to fight bandits. We need more bullions.”

Felix, who did pick up on the fact that the royal family has cash to spare even as a child, finds this idea absurd. Then he remembers that Cornelia probably drained the treasury about as dry over five years of war and mismanagement as Fraldarius’s resources ended up despite his father’s careful efforts. He’s still not sure how his father managed to find the gold to feed everyone at Garreg Mach, but he’s really not looking forward to his uncle’s updates on their resources.

Okay. Maybe they do need the money. He heard Sylvain complaining about being handed a steel lance the other day. “Fine,” Felix says. “Tell me when Dimitri’s ready to leave.”

The Professor pauses, then cants their head. “Did you _want_ to go with Dimitri?”

This, Felix thinks, is the stupidest question the Professor has ever asked him. Then he remembers the time the Professor asked him to start doing this in the first place. “Taking Dimitri across enemy lines is my job. What I want has nothing to do with it.”

Byleth blinks. They seem confused. “You don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

Felix scoffs. “The b—_Dimitri’s_ decision to stop growling at everyone doesn’t make it any less important for him to have a traveling partner. We’ve developed a rhythm over the months. I don’t see any point in changing things now.”

“We could, if you want.” They tilt their head. “Sylvain told me that you weren’t ready to let him step in when he asked. I thought you might change your mind now that Dimitri is doing better?”

“I—” Goddess. He vows to drag Sylvain to the training grounds and make him regret this. “It’s fine,” Felix says. “I’ll accompany him. Stop questioning it.”

“If you say so,” the Professor says. They pause again, that almost-blank expression studying him a moment longer. “Felix?”

“What?”

He does not recognize the embrace for what it is until the Professor’s arms are already wrapped around him tight. He shouldn’t let it paralyze him. This isn’t the _first_ time. There was that terrible one, right after Gronder Field, when—

It’s not the first. Still, he can’t seem to figure out what to do with his arms. He stands there, waiting for it to stop and be over.

The hug does not stop. It just keeps happening.

“I love you,” Byleth says.

“_Why would you say that?_”

“Mercedes suggested I try using my words more.” They pat him on top of his head, which he grumbles at, and then draw back. They have that small smile of theirs on their face, the one Dimitri always gushes over. “How was it?”

“It was overly sentimental,” Felix says, scowling as he tries to fix his hair. “Don’t expect me to reciprocate.”

He looks at their face. They’re still smiling.

With effort, he adds, “It served the purpose. Some people here could learn from your bluntness.”

“I’m glad you like it,” Byleth tells him. Then their attention shifts to the student passing by. They call out, “Lysithea! It’s time for your Great Knight exam.”

Lysithea, whose arms are full with a trio of sweet buns, freezes, stares, and then breaks into a run. Byleth switches into pursuit, leaving Felix standing in Fhirdiad Castle’s entrance hall with absolutely nothing to do with himself.

Felix pinches the bridge of his nose and decides to work off some steam. 

And it would be fine, if Dimitri didn’t hunt him down and start talking to him in that pathetic, tragic manner he has fallen back into as if he could counterbalance his former aggression by going too far in the other direction.

“It is not necessary for you to accompany me in this manner,” Dimitri tells Felix, cornering him in the castle’s private training yard. “I understand how difficult this has been for you.”

There are other training yards he could run to, enough to satisfy all the nobles and soldiers who might inhabit the castle and hope to sharpen their skills, but he doesn’t want to. This is the one that Felix was brought to as a child. It’s the one where he learned to fight alongside Dimitri, and often Ingrid and Sylvain, and—

And Glenn.

Completing the thought makes his jaw ache, but he still does it. He makes himself do it.

Felix says, “Shut up, b—Dimitri. I told the Professor I’m going with you. If you want to get out of this partnership, stop dancing around the point and tell me as much.”

“I would never say such a thing,” Dimitri assures him. “However, I felt it important to make the offer, as I understand that you have cause to disapprove of me.”

Felix folds his arms. “Why? Did you do something I wouldn’t approve of again?”

“No,” Dimitri says. Then he pauses.

Felix waits.

After a moment, Dimitri nods to himself in confirmation. “Yes. So far as I am aware, I have not of late done anything that would incur your displeasure.”

Felix’s eyes narrow.

“What I mean to say,” Dimitri tries again, “is that you are, of course, well aware of the boar I can be. I could not ask you to forgive me my actions, and what I have cost you, so soon.”

Cold rushes down Felix’s spine. He feels a roiling in his gut and he steadies himself. Fighting stance. Sword in hand. He can breathe. He has to breathe. “Shut up,” Felix says.

Dimitri listens.

“Don’t be an idiot.” He grinds his teeth. He tries, very carefully, to say, “Look. Listen. I wanted to apologize to _you_.”

Dimitri blinks at him. “To… apologize to _me_?”

“Yes,” Felix grits out. “For how I treated you.”

Dimitri looks at him incredulously. “I don’t understand.”

Felix looks at Dimitri, also incredulously. But _his_ disbelief is actually justified. “I called you a boar. A _beast_. I treated you like—ugh, don’t make me explain this—”

“But Felix,” Dimitri says, “you were only correct in saying so. I was, for all those years, merely a wild animal craving blood. Even now, that part of myself remains, and I will not deny its truth. Moreover, were you not much wounded by the consequences of my actions?”

“You didn’t hurt me. Don’t be absurd.”

“Felix,” Dimitri admonishes, “It is I who took not just your brother but also your father from you. Were it not for the blindness of my hunger for revenge, your father would still be with us now. You have every right to despise me, and I have much for which to atone.”

Felix stares at him. Felix continues to stare at him. Felix remembers everything that Byleth told him about using his words and talking about his feelings. He remembers he needs to try to communicate.

“Shut the fuck up,” Felix hisses. “Don’t you _dare_. Don’t you dare use my brother and my father like that again. You’re a fool beyond measure if you think that _that_ is what you should be apologizing for.”

“But—”

“I said shut up,” Felix says. “And get out of my sight. I’m sick of looking at you.”

Dimitri stares at him. Felix glowers back. Dimitri searches his face, and his expression falls. He nods and steps away.

“Very well,” Dimitri says. “I shall leave you be.”

“Good.”

As Dimitri turns his back, and starts heading for the exit to the training grounds, a thought occurs to Felix. The idea makes him absolutely livid.

He shouts, “And don’t you dare try to trade me out for another traveling partner because of this. I’m not a damn coward!”

Dimiti turns around. He opens his mouth, looks at Felix’s face, and then closes his mouth again. He nods, then shuts the training grounds door behind him.

Felix throws his sword at the training dummy, and in a burst of his Crest it shatters into hay and splinters. He growls at it and stomps away.

Felix is sick of talking to people. He decides he will impale the next person who talks to him. He will grab them by the shoulder, and when they try to greet him, he will put his sword right through their stomach.

“Hi, Felix!” says Annette, her arms full of flowers. “Help me carry these!”

Half the ridiculous bounty of flora is shoved into his hands. Annette, singing, starts to walk off, and Felix follows behind.

It’s only when they’re out through the northern courtyard that Felix begins to realize the end destination of this walk. His eyes narrow, but he holds his tongue. Annette brings them past the entrance to the royal tombs and stops Felix in the rows of plots meant for those fallen valiantly in royal service. Then, flower by flower, Annette gives offerings to the dead.

Not every grave. Frowning, Felix scans the gravestones for explanatory details. They’re all knights, and all dead some time in the past fifteen years. Some of the names, he realizes, are distantly familiar. They call to mind distant memories of long funeral processions, of standing first beside his father and brother, and then beside his father alone once Glenn joined the knights who escorted the bodies of the dead to their final resting places. These knights, his father had told him, were friends. Felix had been upset, then, at the idea that you could have so many friends who would die and leave you alone.

Then it was Glenn’s turn to be carried.

Annette sings to herself throughout her work. When there are about half as many flowers in Felix’s arms than there were at the start, she comes up to him and pauses. She looks him over. She bites her lip.

“Um,” she says, and holds her hands out to take all the flowers back.

Felix doesn’t give them to her. “What is it?”

“Hey, don’t be rude!” Annette says, and then pauses again. Her expression softens. “I just thought maybe you wouldn’t want to come for this part?”

Her eyes flicker away from him. Felix follows the path of the gaze. He scowls.

“I don’t care,” he says. “You made me take the flowers this far. I’m taking them the rest of the way.”

“You’re such a jerk,” Annette tells him, and then adds, “Thank you.” They walk onward.

The memorial to the victims—the Faerghus victims—of the Tragedy of Duscur is still well-tended, even ten years, a usurpation, and a crown retaken later. The carved names look as fresh as they were on those first days after the tragedy. Then, Felix stood here with his father, and they watched his brother’s name be set in stone.

There are flowers in front of the memorial. Gladioli, mostly, but there’s variety—roses, violets, lilies, valerian. Felix’s old man would always bring a bouquet of gladioli mixed with violets to Glenn’s grave on their estate, every day for that first year, then every week after. When they visited the capitol, the first thing he would do was come to the memorial and offer tribute there, as well. He went to it even before he attended to the royal tombs.

It was a waste, Felix used to tell him. The dead are dead. Glenn’s body isn’t even in that empty plot in Fraldarius, and it certainly isn’t in Fhirdiad. There is nothing left of Glenn that would care.

He knows his father would have brought him flowers if he had died that death, too. Felix used to lie awake imagining suffocating in his grave on the petals.

“Just—hang on,” Annette says. Felix, looking at the foot of the memorial, feels her tug on his sleeve. He holds the flowers out and, one by one, Annette takes one, looks up at the plaque as if to check a name, and then sets a flower down with all the rest.

It takes a while. Seven names in, she starts humming. But there’s a strain to it, and Felix knows as sure as anything what she is blocking out.

Felix stops counting the flowers until, finally, there is only one left in his hand. Annette pulls on his sleeve again. This time, he looks up at her.

“Do you want to put this one down?”

His father had given him violets and gladioli of his own to give to Glenn, the first time. He had thrown them in his father’s face.

“No,” Felix says. “Ingrid and Dimitri’ve already showered him with regrets enough.” Then he looks at Annette’s eyes. Wide, blue, open. “Thank you,” he tells her.

Annette smiles at him. It’s weak, but it’s there. “Thanks for doing this with me, Felix,” she says. She takes the last flower and puts it down for herself.

Out of nowhere, Felix finds himself saying, “Dimitri is going to want one of these for my father.”

Annette looks up at him from at the base of the stone. She frowns. “I heard him and Ingrid talking about doing something for the soldiers who died at Gronder Field. Actually, there's a lot of talk about memorials, His Highness and Dedue were talking about putting up one for the people of Duscur, with the survivors Dedue met, but—" Annette bites at her lip. "Felix, if you don’t want it for Lord Rodrigue, you should just tell him.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Felix says. “The old man couldn’t be happier than to find himself scratched into stone and commemorated for dying for his king.”

“My father probably feels the same way,” Annette says, bitterly, and then covers her mouth. “Sorry! Forget I said that. Um, so you’re okay with your father being on a memorial?”

But Felix, who has talked enough about his own father to last a lifetime and then some, isn’t going to let Annette get away with this. “If you have a problem with your father, you should say it. There’s no point pretending things are fine.”

Annette scowls at him and straightens up. “Who says I don’t talk about it? I talk to _him_ about it. I’ve probably had more conversations with my father in the last year than you have with yours—”

Her eyes go wide. Felix says nothing.

“Sorry. Sorry!” Annette shakes her head. “I didn’t mean—I know things were complicated between the two of you, oh Goddess, why is this the _one time_ I’m in the wrong with you—it’s not my fault—” She wrings her hands and dances from foot to foot, all that nervous energy unable to be contained. “I didn’t want to be _rude_, I _get it_, this is so so unfair, it’s just because you’re such a rude jerk!”

Felix looks at her.

Then, he laughs.

Standing in front of his brother’s grave, thinking about his father’s death, he laughs, and when he sees Annette’s shocked face, he laughs louder, until he is bent over wheezing. Annette squeaks and runs to his side.

“Goddess, Felix, are you dying? You’re laughing, you _must_ be dying. It’s okay, the Professor gave me Faith tutoring last week, I can heal you!”

The laughing continues, until the corners of his eyes are wet. Annette holds onto him desperately, the frosting-bright warmth of her healing wrapped around him. When he breaks off and pulls back, she’s still staring at him. He grins.

She punches him in the shoulder. “Don’t make fun of me! You really scared me laughing like that!”

“I’ll never understand how your mind works,” he tells her, knowing she’ll find it annoying.

“Good! I don’t want a villain like you understanding me.” The shape of her lips tells him she’s trying not to smile with him.

By now, the sun has shifted towards its horizon. The memorial’s shadow protects them from the rays.

Annette looks into his face. “Do you want to, you know… talk about it?”

“I’ve had enough of talking,” Felix answers. He looks away from her, and grinds her teeth. But it’s Annette. He tells her, “No one understands. My father used to obsess over the dead, too, and look where it got him. I’m not interested in wasting more words on those who can’t hear me.”

There is a pause. Annette is looking at him differently. Felix realizes, very suddenly, that he’s in trouble. “Okay, which one of them is it?”

“What?”

“You always get like this when you’re fighting with one of your friends you grew up with.” She taps her jaw. “It isn’t Sylvain. He laughs anything serious off. So it has to be Ingrid or Dimitri.”

“I’m not fighting with Ingrid or Dimitri,” Felix insists.

Annette rolls her eyes. “Okay, sure.”

“I’m _not_,” Felix tells her.

A pause.

“The damned b—Dimitri is just an idiot. Alright?”

“Ha!” Annette says, triumphant. “I knew it! This is how you always get!”

“I don't get like anything.” He folds his arms. Since they’re both still on the ground, this looks stupid. Felix decides to stand and Annette quickly rises with him, probably because she hates giving him any extra advantage on height. “And no, I don’t want to talk it through with him or talk about it with you. All he’ll do is wallow in guilt and self-pity.”

“Ugh,” says Annette. Felix braces himself for the scolding. “Why does he have to be _so much_ like Father sometimes? Like, I know Father kind of raised His Highness too, but it’s the worst!”

This is not being scolded.

This is… being agreed with.

Twice.

Annette catches his look. “What?” Now _she_ is the one folding her arms. “Look, just because I’m trying to fix things with Father doesn’t mean I don’t find him really frustrating! I’m allowed to be annoyed, so don’t tell me I’m not.”

“I didn’t say you weren’t,” Felix says. She deflates a little at this lack of accusation, as if she was hoping for a fight. Felix huffs in reply, glancing away from Annette and the memorial behind her. “Your father and mine are the same. Perhaps they’re the ones who infected Dimitri with it, while they were busy poisoning him with chivalric ideals.”

“Um,” Annette says, “I feel weird agreeing to all of this because your father is—you know—”

“He’s dead.”

“Yeah,” Annette agrees, and continues, “so, I’m just going to agree about the part about my father. Not whether or not they’re why His Highness is so gloomy, I don’t know if there’s any point trying to figure that out. It’s just… it’s so frustrating. I just wish His Highness, and Father, and everyone like that, didn’t think they had to be _alone_ to fix things. What’s the point of that?”

“There’s no point to it. It’s just self-flagellation. They _want_ to wallow in their regrets.”

“That feels almost right, but also it’s kind of mean and usually you’re only half right about anything?”

“Hey.”

Annette taps a finger to her lip and, guileless, asks, “Is that how it is for you?”

“No.” Felix’s answer is immediate. “I don’t regret anything.”

Annette looks at him. She clearly doesn’t believe him. Felix thinks of a sword, and plate mail, and his father’s eyes turned almost grey in the poor lighting of a Fhirdiad guest room as a faint, dark splotch spread across his cheek from the impact of Felix’s fist. It had made Felix’s hand ache.

Annette is still here.

Slowly, the words being dragged out of him, but letting them come, Felix says, “I don’t want to live tied to the past. That’s why I keep my regrets to myself. I’m not wallowing; I’m moving forward.”

“Hm,” Anntte says, thinking about it. She has the same look she had on her face when she said he was only half right about anything. “So, always looking ahead?”

“Yes.”

“Never looking back?”

“Exactly.”

“Like a shark!”

“What.”

“Sharks. You know.” Annette puts her hands together. She moves them back and forth. “Like a shark, swimming forward! They don’t swim backwards.”

“Are you trying to mimic a shark’s movements with your hands?”

“Yeah!” Annette says, “Obviously.” Then she bats his arm. “Don’t get distracted. You’re like a shark, always moving ahead through the water.”

“Hm,” Felix says. Then, after a moment, “Do you have songs about sharks?”

“Shut up!” A pause. “Yes. But I’ll only share it with you if you help me get grilled herring from the dining hall. It’s _so_ busy in there, I need someone grumpy like you to get me through.”

“Has it ever occurred to you I might be busy?”

“Nope!”

Felix feels his mouth doing things he didn’t give it permission to. Annette, very brightly, smiles back.

“Alright,” he agrees. “For the song. I’ll eat with you.”

“I’m not going to eat with _you_, silly. Flayn already said she was going to make you eat with her today.”

“Then why do you need my help getting the dishes?” Wait. “What do you mean, Flayn said she was going to ‘make me’ eat with her?”

“I need help,” Annette says, “because I think Father is hiding away again because he has so many memories about the castle, and I want your help carrying them while I hunt him down.”

That wipes all further questions about Flayn from his head, and his smile with it. Felix studies the look on her face. “You’re angry with him.”

“Yeah,” Annette says. “But he’s trying finally. So… getting stuck in that anger wouldn’t be like a shark, right? And I was thinking—”

She glances behind her. At the pile of flowers, in all the different colors of grief. At the names listed upon names, towering up towards the sky.

Felix is tired.

“I was thinking,” Annette said, “that I’d really regret it if I didn’t bother him to spend time with me more. I wish _he’d_ try more too, and sometimes I don’t want to bother, so I don’t, but… I think I’d like to try a bit more. For me. You know?”

Looking at Felix now, she’s biting her lip. It’s not unlike the expression she got the first time he caught her singing. Anticipating mockery, bristling up before insult comes. Then, she’d struck before it could. But she waits, this time. He likes to think it’s a good sign.

“Don’t look at me like that.” Felix looks away from her. “I already promised I’d help.”

“Yay!” Annette leaps up and kisses him on the cheek. “Thank you, Felix! You’re the best!”

Felix, not able to reply immediately, doesn’t stop Annette from dragging him away from the graveyard again. She half-hums under her breath, like she’s trying to keep the song to herself in case he runs off after receiving payment.

They keep moving, but just briefly, Felix glances over his shoulder. He can’t quite make out the letters of the name, but his father came here so many times. Felix knows how high to look.

“Maybe later,” Felix says, before he knows the words are coming. Annette looks up at him. He says, without looking at her, “Your offer. Maybe I’ll take it up later.”

Annette doesn’t say anything else. She just smiles at him and sings a song about sharks.

Traveling with Dimitri, now that he’s no longer only interested in revenge for the dead, is supposed to be easier.

For the most part, that holds true. Dimitri has gotten back into his unbearably irritating habit of teasing Felix, but he mostly eats decently and at least attempts sleep. Once, when Felix reminded him it had been too long since he ate, Dimitri had smiled apologetically and thanked Felix for looking out for him.

“It’s nothing,” Felix had said, folding his arms. “It’s just because Dedue isn’t with us to babysit you.”

“Is that so?” Dimitri had asked, his smile changing into something knowing. “I see.”

That smile, sincere and unweighted by the past, was so irksome that Felix had had to leave the campsite to go practice his forms for an hour. When Felix returned, Dimitri had already prepared their beds, and he had left a portion of their pheasant out for Felix.

“Thanks,” Felix had said, under his breath.

Dimitri had smiled again. “It’s nothing. Merely that Dedue isn’t with us.”

Only luck kept Dimitri from being impaled on the sword Felix threw his way then. But Dimitri had chuckled like he believed Felix had tossed the sword to miss.

_Unbearable._

Other than that, the traveling has been alright. This holds true right up until they’re ambushed on a road that cuts through a thick forest. The bandits, a group of ten or so, emerge from the trees at once, aiming crossbows right at their chests. They are surrounded.

“Your money,” says the bandit leader, a man in tattered yellow clothing, “or your life.”

“_My_ life won’t be forfeit today,” Felix replies, but Dimitri holds up his hand, and Felix stops reaching for his sword.

Felix then realizes he had stopped at Dimitri’s command instinctively. He resists attacking the bandits out of spite.

“This need not come to violence,” Dimitri says. He is speaking in the gravelly and austere tones of a leader that Felix remembers best from Lambert in the throne room, the king in public—Lambert moments before the mask broke, and then he’d pick up Ingrid to ask how his favorite falcon knight is doing, tossing her sky high as she shrieked in delight. “We cannot give you all that we carry, but if you have need, we can share some of what we have.”

“What are you doing?” Felix hisses.

The leader says, scoffing, “Why should we accept some when we could take all of it off your corpses?”

At that, Dimitri stops. He looks the leader directly in the eyes. Nothing in him seems to waver. “Is that a weight,” he says, slow, calm, “that you truly wish to carry, when you have been offered another course?”

The leader looks back at Dimitri. At that level gaze—piercing and steady. A bearing that would not flinch. The bandit's crossbow begins to waver.

“Wait a sec,” says the bandit. He takes a step back. “You’re the crown prince.”

“What?” says Dimitri.

“Fuck,” says Felix.

“You’re the—you’re Prince Dimitri! I saw you, at Gronder Field, you had the Blaiddyd Heroes’ Relic!”

“Ah,” Dimitri says.

“Fuck,” repeats Felix, drawing his sword. Dimitri draws his spear, very sadly.

The bandit takes one look at Dimitri, 188 cm tall and very morose with his steel murder weapon, and turns tail to run. His group follows suit. Felix lunges after them.

“Wait!” Dimitri grabs his arm, which means Felix can’t move anywhere because of Dimitri’s ridiculously strong grip. “He has accepted peaceful resolution,” Dimitri says. “We should not pursue.”

“What do you mean we shouldn’t pursue? We’re literally going to Brionac Plateau to kill bandits!” The followers have already scattered into the forest. Felix knows he can hunt them down, but only if Dimitri lets go _right now._

Instead of doing that, which would be useful, Dimitri speaks. Slowly. And with great consternation. “The bandits we are set to fight,” he says, with his very sad frown in place, “have been harrying the villagers in the region. There have been many casualties. We have not heard of bandits here before, which suggests their turn to violence is recent. From his clothing, he seems to be acting not from malice but as a deserter now trying to survive the depravations of the war. If we are to make progress when this war ends, then we must mete out our justice with mercy for those who would turn from wrongdoing as much as we give punishment to those who continue to do harm.”

It’s a very reasonably delivered speech. Felix would ordinarily be approve of its tone. Felix would even ordinarily agree to the basic concepts behind it.

In this case, however, Felix shouts, “What about _us_? He knows who you are, you stupid boar!”

Dimitri freezes. Felix also freezes. They stare at each other. Felix can see it in Dimitri: the recognition of himself as monstrous, the retreat into self-loathing, that _irritating_ readiness to take an insult, to take anything Felix has to spit at him, as if Felix wanted him to accept it, as if Felix wasn’t begging all those years for Dimitri to tell him he is wrong—

“Shut up,” Felix snaps. “That’s not what I meant.”

“Felix,” Dimitri says, “There is no need to explain. That aspect of myself is, as I have said, part of my nature. I would not deny—”

“No! Shut up! I didn’t mean you were being—you’re not being the _beast_, shut _up_, I meant that you’re being unbearably irritating right now.”

Dimitri stares at him more.

Felix folds his arms. “I—I didn’t mean ‘boar’ like the animal. That isn’t what I said, I said ‘boor,’ like ‘boorish.’ B-O-O-R. Not a beast.”

Dimitri blinks at him. And then, slowly, “You were… making a pun?”

Felix grits his teeth. “Yes.”

“Ah,” Dimitri says. “That’s very clever. But I fear that it may be lost when spoken. Perhaps you should reserve the pun for letters? Alois explained to me that certain jokes are better delivered in written form—”

“Why are you learning to tell jokes from _Alois_? He isn’t even any good at them.”

“Yes,” Dimitri says, with great enthusiasm. “His jokes are so terrible that they somehow come to embody absolute hilarity. I find it very rewarding to listen to Alois’s instruction on humor and hope I can incorporate more into my own speeches.”

“You’re an absurd fool,” Felix tells him, and bites the inside of his cheek to keep his stupid mouth from betraying him by making the wrong shape _again_.

Then he remembers where they are and what they’re doing.

“That’s not the point.” Felix gestures to the space around them. The path, and the woods it cuts through, is noisy only with the natural sounds of a forest. There is no suggestion of the bandits. “One of those people, however good they might be, is going to talk. Then this is going to be more difficult for both of us.”

Dimitri’s smile fades. Instead, his expression becomes solemn. “I know, Felix, that there will be a cost to this.” Dimitri holds his hand out. Felix gives Dimitri his sword, but Dimitri does not yet turn to put their weapons away. “It is a price I willingly pay. My only regret is that you must pay the price with me.”

Unbidden, a memory comes back to Felix: Lambert on the steps of Fhirdiad castle, warm and effusive, greeting a delegation from the Leicester Alliance. Lambert receiving their bows of recognition, then pulling them up to shake their hands warmly. Lambert guiding them inside with a broad smile and absolute certainty.

Dimitri, serious and calm as he meets Felix’s eyes, does not at all look like the king did then. But Felix hears in his head the words that seemed to have slipped from his own father’s lips, as he stood there with Felix and Glenn and watched the royal family above: 

_I would follow that man to the ends of the world._

Felix scowls, more out of habit than anything. “I knew you were a soft-hearted fool when I decided to travel beside you. I came here because you need someone to guide your course when you step wrong. Don’t mope about this. Understand?”

Dimitri studies him. His eye moves from Felix’s mouth to his eyes, over his folded arms, and then back up to his face. Finally, Dimitri turns aside, and he packs away their sword and lance. “I understand. Thank you, Felix.”

“Just get moving,” Felix grumbles, and drags himself back onto his horse.

As they travel, the rhythm of the horses lull them into a calm, and Dimitri begins to sing, quietly, one of Annette’s songs. He gets the words wrong, so Felix has no choice but to correct him. They do a poor job harmonizing, which Felix tells Dimitri, but Dimitri just laughs and keeps going. They only go quiet when they break once more onto the main thoroughfare that leads into the next town.

This is not the first time Felix has walked into a tavern and heard a familiar voice. He hopes it’s the last.

> This lonely garden’s thornèd blooms doth grow  
Beside the castle sands to which I’m bound.  
Though I would hold thine hand that bloom has found  
I have no name that your lips might bestow.
> 
> Myself you know I cannot give or show.  
My ruined heart is ugly from its wound.  
When I, hiding monster, do seek thee, crowned,  
I mask my face for fear that thou will go.
> 
> Perhaps if I, courageous, had gone then  
To speak with thee in all my truest face,  
Would fate bear fruit from off a different tree?  
Weeping waves that wash sands away again,  
I linger here beside the castle’s trace  
In shattered mask, I say: I still want thee.

“We should leave,” Felix says.

Dimitri looks at him, blankly curious. “Why? There does not appear to be anything wrong with this establishment.”

Felix jerks his head towards the main room of the tavern. Dimitri peeks in, and Felix looks in after him, seeing exactly what he expected: Dorothea on a stage, singing. Hilda is also there, sat beside her and completely failing to play a percussion instrument.

“Ah!” Dimitri says. “How pleasant. When we book our rooms, we must stay and watch a performance.”

“What? Are you an idiot?” Felix lowers his voice. “Gathering together is a beginner's mistake.”

“But D—this, ah, dear singer,” Dimitri corrects, “has done the patrons of this establishment the honor of putting on a performance. It would be poor manners not to attend.”

“It’s reckless.”

“It’s polite.”

Felix pauses. He looks at Dorothea again. He listens to the lilt of her voice in his ears.

Felix grits his teeth. “Fine,” he says. “We’ll stay. But only to keep watch.”

“Of course,” says Dimitri. He’s smiling again. Felix hates it. “You know, I did not recognize the voice at first. I’m quite impressed, Felix. You truly have an ear for music. Have you listened to her perform often?”

“Shut up,” Felix says, and shoves his arm. “You’re going to blow our cover. Go sit down while I book the rooms.”

“Certainly,” Dimitri answers. The smile is, very annoyingly, still there. Felix turns away from it and heads back to the front desk to get their rooms.

When Felix catches up with him again, Dimitri has picked another corner table that lets him get his back to the wall and a clear line of sight to the exit. That part doesn’t have Felix scowling; it’s good strategy. What _does_ get him to scowl is seeing Hilda and Dorothea at their table, chatting with Dimitri with an obvious amount of amiability.

At this rate, Felix is going to get lockjaw from gritting his teeth so much. Rather than addressing Dimitri, who has the audacity to_ still_ be smiling, he throws himself into a chair beside him and facing Dorothea.

“That was a decent performance,” he tells her. “Your voice wasn’t too grating on the ears.”

“Amazing,” Dorothea says, glancing at Dimitri. “Your husband really is as charming as you said.”

Hilda giggles. Felix feels warm and wants to leave.

“I—” Dimitri pauses, and clears his throat. He’s blushing too, for some absurd reason. “I did not speak anything ill of you, I assure you. We were only discussing what brought them here.”

“And what was that?” Felix snaps out.

“Oh, you know!” says Hilda. “We just heard these rumors about how the Prince of Faerghus came through the nearby forest and turned the tables on some bandits, and now the whole area is _extra_ on alert, so _we_ had to change our route to avoid getting into trouble.”

Felix looks at Dimitri. Dimitri looks away.

“So!” says Dorothea, with the sharp cheerfulness of a freshly polished blade, “we had to reroute. And now we’re here.”

“Great,” Felix says. “Don’t get us into any trouble.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Dorothea answers. “But I’m sure that _we_ won’t be the problem here.”

“This is boring,” Hilda interrupts. “Hey! Server! Can we get some drinks!” Her eyes flicker over both Dimitri and Felix. Suddenly, Felix senses danger. “Can we get some _free_ drinks? It’s these two handsome men’s anniversary!”

Felix stops moving. He does not see what Dimitri’s reaction is; he barely registers the server’s arrival.

“We don’t serve free drinks for anniversaries,” the server tells Hilda, eyes narrowed. But she smiles at Dimitri and Felix. “Congrats, you two! How many years are you celebrating?”

Dimitri clears his throat. “That’s, ah—it’s six moons,” he says, awkwardly.

“Oh,” the server says. Her brows draw together. “Not exactly an anniversary, then.”

Felix scowls at her. “It’s a _six-moon_ anniversary. Or would you say it isn’t worth celebrating what happiness we can grasp while this war continues to devastate the land?”

“My bad,” says the server, holding up her hands.

“Plus,” Hilda offers, “they’re childhood sweethearts.”

“Aww,” the server coos. She sounds pretty eager to change the subject. “How long have you been sweet on each other?”

Felix, who doesn’t make the same mistake twice, says, “Since we were six.”

Dimitri says, “I cannot recall a time when I was not in love with F—”

Dimitri then stops moving.

Felix also stops moving. He stares at Dimitri. Dimitri stares back at him. Felix’s battle instincts register movement, but as if from a distance.

“Um,” the server says. “I’ll go get your drinks!” She vanishes immediately. A part of Felix reminds him they didn’t give her their orders.

Felix ignores that part. He is busy looking at Dimitri, who still looks like he has been struck by a wyvern battalion gambit.

“I—I will go check on our rooms,” Dimitri declares, shoving to his feet. The table half-cracks under his hands. He shoves the chair back and vanishes out of Felix’s line of sight, as Felix continues to stare at the chair where he once was.

“Wow,” Dorothea says. “You guys are _really_ bad at this.”

Hilda says, “Felix, will you _pleeeeaaaase_ take my order to the server? Pretty please?”

The knife in Felix’s hand comes down on the table. Hard. He doesn’t remember how the knife got into his hand, but it’s entirely satisfying to pierce the table with it.

“Uh, Felix?” Hilda asks. “Are you okay?”

“You and your ‘husband’ better pay to replace this,” Dorothea warns. “A business like this can’t afford careless damages, particularly not in war time.”

“That _fool_,” Felix snarls. “What an absolute idiot. He can’t even get the name right.”

“Uh?” Hilda says.

Dorothea offers, “You’re right, you’re both very bad at this, but I don’t think—”

“For months he readily deceived his way through trouble, as if the truth of himself meant nothing to him, and _now_ he tells the most implausible lies? I can’t believe him!”

“Wow,” Hilda says. “You really _are_ that stupid.”

“Disappointing,” Dorothea says, “but utterly unsurprising.”

“I’m going to give him a piece of my mind,” Felix announces, shoving himself to his feet. His attention snaps back to the two women in front of him. They both are looking at him like he’s insane. “Well? What’s tomorrow’s plan? Are we traveling separate or together?”

Dorothea and Hilda exchange a glance. “Oh, you know,” Hilda says. “We’re just two poor, helpless, _defenceless_ women, in need of a big strong man—”

“Be at the stables by six o’clock tomorrow morning,” Felix warns her. “Any later and we leave without you.”

“Ew, that's so early.”

Felix does not wait to listen to her complaints. He is marching upstairs to his room to give the boar—_Dimitri_—a lecture on his shit lying skills. Ever since he became himself again he has been making a mess of this, and it needs to stop.

“Ah. Felix. Hello,” says Dimitri. He is in the middle of laying out a traveler’s bed on the floor. This, very rationally, incenses Felix. “I see you, ah, decided, to follow. That’s quite—”

“What are you doing?” Felix demands.

Dimitri blinks at him. “Making a second bed?”

“_What?_”

“There is only one bed,” Dimitri says, slowly. He gestures. His gesture is aimed vaguely towards the room’s bed, which is, yes, the only one they have. “Given—well, of course, I could take a second room, but I feared to raise suspicions, so, I thought—you know.”

“I ‘know,’” Felix repeats. It is a warning.

“Yes,” Dimitri says, and then clears his throat. “You know.”

“I know _what_, exactly.”

Dimitri looks at him. Felix, in deference to his irritation, makes direct eye contact. He does this because he knows—

Dimitri looks away first. “Just, ah… that I am more accustomed to uncomfortable sleeping circumstances. Yes! That’s it. So of course you must have the bed.”

Dimitri, Felix decides for the hundredth time, is too much of a stubborn idiot to deserve warnings. “We’ve both been in the same war, Dimitri. I’m just as accustomed to discomfort as you are. Take the bed for yourself.”

Dimitri opens his mouth, looks at Felix, shuts it. And then, either brave or unafraid of death, he says, “It is likely, Felix, that I have spent more time sleeping in uncomfortable places than yourself. Not to discount your experiences, of course, only that—” He breaks off on seeing Felix’s face.

Good.

Felix is not stupid. He is aware that Dimitri is right about this. He has no idea what Dimitri went through those five years, but Felix, for all that he had a hard time of it, is willing to believe that Dimitri had to rough it worse.

But that would mean accepting a loss.

“Oh, yes,” Felix sneers, “Wandering alone through the woods and forests, how unpleasant. Do you think I didn’t experience any of the same over the last five years? I had to sleep on the rock floor of a cave.” Dimitri’s eye does not widen. “In Gautier. At midwinter.” There’s a fraction of shock. Felix goes for the killing blow. “With _Sylvain._”

Dimitri’s eye _does_ widen. His mouth opens again, but this time it seems involuntary. He shuts it.

“Ah,” he says. “I see. Then, of course, you would want—that’s only natural. Ah, congratulations to you both.”

“What?”

“For. Er. Is it a secret? It is only that you spoke so freely of it now, and with such a tone of triumph—”

Felix can’t believe this. “You really think that I—” He chokes. Tries again. “It was freezing cold. Jagged stone. _Sylvain_.” 

Dimitri clears his throat. “That is—Felix, surely you are aware of how you, at times, look at him. It is difficult not to notice.”

“No. Shut up. I don’t look at him like anything.” Felix presses a hand to his face, which feels absurdly warm. Again. Damned Adrestian weather. Maybe he’s caught something. “I’ve seen how _you_ look at him,” Felix answers.

“Me? I—I cannot say I know what you mean. Of course, Sylvain is very handsome, and one would have to be blind not to see the appeal of—” Dimitri stops and starts again. “Sylvain’s, ah, points of attraction, shall we say, are not the subject of discussion. Please, Felix. Take the bed. I could not accept having it while you are without.”

Felix folds his arms. Dimitri stares imploringly (blushing) at him. Felix looks at the bedroll in Dimitri’s hands. He decides on his solution.

“It’s yours to take. I won’t give in to your absurd obsession with self-sacrifice.”

“This isn’t a matter of—Felix?”

Rather than wait, Felix has gone off to his own bags and dragged out his own bedroll. He sets it up on the opposite side of the room to Dimitri’s. Then, without glancing over Dimitri’s way, he crawls in and drags it over himself.

Dimitri will have to deal with _that_. Felix Hugo Fraldarius is not so easily defeated, not by a whimpering pup of a man.

“Felix,” comes the voice from across the room. “Will you not take your boots off?”

Felix throws the front of the roll overtop of his face. “No. Shut up. I sleep like this. Don’t talk to me again.”

When Hilda sees them the next morning, twenty minutes late to their agreed upon departure time, she and Dorothea exchange a glance. Then she tells them, “Wow. You two look like trash.”

Thankfully, they do not at any point encounter any knights as they pass through Rowe. It’s specifically thanks to Dorothea, who traveled through this area during her wartime wandering and who is familiar with many of the back routes and hidden paths. Dimitri keeps mostly quiet, but he gazes down roads now and then, or frowns as they pass empty or burned down villages.

Rowe has not yet bent the knee to Dimitri. Margrave Gautier has promised to rally the Eastern lords and see to it that the West remembers their true king, but for now it’s to their advantage that Rowe is still at war with them. It makes slipping across the border through one of Dorothea’s routes easier than it might have been had they already switched sides.

That doesn’t make it any easier to ride past the consequences of this long, ugly war.

Unfortunately, there is no way out of Rowe and into the Empire without going past a checkpoint. Even a backroad that dodges Arianrhod will force them through one. They could try the forests, but it would make them late for their meetup with the Professor by at least three days.

So, it is with a growing sense of dread that Felix approaches the checkpoint into Empire territory. He glances to his right, where Dorothea and Hilda are chatting idly. They’re relaxed and confident, cheerfully at ease; Felix has been tricked by the pair often enough that he doesn’t doubt they’ll get through the checkpoint without trouble. Then he glances to his left.

Dimitri is a very good rider, so his horse is keeping a steady path. Still, there’s a clear skittishness to the animal. The reason for it is obvious with one glance at Dimitri’s hands twisting the reins between them.

Felix narrows his eyes. He calls them to a halt a mile out from the checkpoint.

“Goddess, Felix,” Hilda says. “Why are you dragging this on? I just want to get through and rest.”

“We really should go as soon as possible,” Dorothea agrees. “Guards are more alert in the morning, but the later the day, the more irritable they are. If we take much longer we’ll be risking tired, cranky, and paranoid Imperial soldiers.”

“Dimitri,” Felix says.

Dimitri glances at him. He looks like a dog who knows exactly why he is about to be scolded. “I will not get the story wrong again.”

Felix folds his arms. “Fine. Then tell it to me again.”

“Felix—”

“Go through our story, Dimitri.”

Dimitri sighs. “We are from Galatea, fleeing the war. We were introduced by our fathers as children. We fell in love at age eight but were not able to be together. Five years ago, we were separated by the war, and several moons back—”

“How many moons?”

“Felix.” But Felix doesn’t budge. Dimitri sighs. “Six moons ago, we were finally wed.”

“And?”

“And?”

“And,” Felix says, and jerks his thumb at Hilda and Dorothea.

“_And_, we met the traveling performers Anise and Judy and decided to accompany them, as there is greater safety in groups.”

“Good,” Felix says. “Now practice lying about it to me.”

“Felix,” Dimitri says, “I don’t think—”

“Yeesh,” Hilda says, tossing back her hair and marching forward, Dorothea beside her. “Stop being such babies about this and just get in line. It will be fine.”

It is not fine.

They have to dismount to wait their turn. It doesn't make Dimitri's horse any more calm. When it’s their turn, the soldier at the checkpoint, a young man who barely looks like he’s figured out how to grow his first beard, glances at the two women in front, horses’ reins in hand, then at Felix and Dimitri behind them with their own horses. His attention goes back to the girls.

“Names and reason for traveling?”

“I’m Judy,” Dorothea says, all flirtatious smile, “and this is Anise. We’re traveling musicians. We were hoping to cross through here to less… contested territory.”

The guard nods. “And the men accompanying you?”

“Yuri and Richard?” Hilda says, stepping back to stand at Dimitri's side. “Oh, we met them along the way and they promised to protect us. We’re just delicate flowers, you know.”

“Both of them, huh?” says the guard, looking at them over.

Hilda smiles, winks, and gets up on her tiptoes to throw an arm around Dimitri’s shoulder. Dimitri stoops to help her reach. “Well, _mostly_ Richard.”

Felix snaps, “He’s my husband.”

The guard raises an eyebrow, looking from Hilda to Dimitri and then to Felix. Then his eyes go back to Dimitri—his hair, his single blue eye, his build. And then to Felix, and his dark locks drawn back in its ponytail.

“He’s your husband.”

“Yes,” Felix snaps. “Six moons. What of it?”

The guard assesses them. Frowns. Then he takes several steps forward, past Dorothea's and Hilda's horses, until he’s right up in Felix's and Dimitri’s faces. Felix fights all his instincts to avoid tensing and reaching towards the weapons in their bags. Dimitri must be resisting the same reflex.

The guard asks, “Why are you traveling through here?”

“Why do you think?” Felix asks. “There’s a _war_ going on. We’re getting away from it.”

“Yeah? And a strong man like your husband isn’t going to be part of it?”

“Look at him,” Felix snaps. “He already has been. Don’t you think it's taken enough?”

The guard snorts, undignified and unpleasant to Felix’s ears. He glances between them. “When did you two meet?”

“When we were children,” Dimitri replies as if by rote. “Our fathers, who were close friends in their time, introduced us. They had hoped we would carry on the friendship.”

“I thought you said you were married,” the guard said.

“You’re not friends with your spouse?” Felix sneers.

The guard focuses on him. Belatedly, Felix remembers that being rude is not a great tactic for getting through a checkpoint.

“I’m not married,” the guard says.

“Utterly shocking,” Felix answers.

“Alright,” the guard says. “The two of you, step out of line. Ladies, you can pass through.”

Hilda gasps and holds on tighter to Dimitri. “We couldn’t possibly! We need a big, strong, _handsome_ man to keep us safe!”

Dimitri blinks at Hilda. He looks confused. “Yuri isn’t very tall,” he reminds her.

“I’m not short.” Felix scowls. “You’re just—unnatural.”

“Am I?”

“Hey,” the guard says, “Both of you, shut up. I have some questions to ask—” He looks at Dimitri again.

“Richard,” Hilda supplies, helpfully, as she strokes affectionately down Dimitri’s arm. Dimitri blinks, and then he pats her hand, comfortingly.

Much against his will, Felix remembers that Goneril would be an excellent marriage prospect for the King of Faerghus to encourage stability between the regions. Dimitri might even be one of the few people who could beat Holst in combat to get her hand.

Felix shoves the thought away. Hilda’s just playing this up to make Dimitri look harmless. This means _nothing_.

The guard is watching them closely. He asks, “When again was it that you two met?”

“When we were children,” Dimitri answers. “Our fathers, who were friends—”

“No,” the guard says, as Felix tries not to yell at Dimitri for using the _exact same wording_, “I meant you and Anise here.”

“Ah,” Dimitri says. “We met the traveling performers Anise and Judith and decided to accompany them, as there is greater safety in groups.” A pause. “Yesterday night?”

Dorothea, who has come up to stand beside Felix, barely manages to catch her own sigh .

“It was _such_ a fun night,” Hilda says, twirling a finger through Dimitri’s hair. “Wasn’t it, Dickie?”

“Uh,” Dimitri says.

Felix is not going to cause further problems. Felix is going to stay quiet, here, with folded arms. He will stay silent, and stand to the side, and let Hilda bluff their way through the checkpoint.

“Which direction did you come from?”

“Oh, we were just from that way!” Hilda slips her hand down Dimitri’s arm to his wrist and raises it to point eastward for her. “We passed through Rowe together, didn’t we?”

“Yes?” Dimitri says. “Ah—Anise. Do you need to sit down? You seem to need quite a great deal of help right now.”

It’s just a role. Hilda is just acting.

“Nope!” Hilda says. “I’m happy right here!” She kisses his cheek.

It’s _fine._

Dorothea nudges Felix in the ribs. He ignores it. She does it again, and then doesn’t withdraw, so he finally looks over at her.

She stares at him, pointedly, with wide eyes.

“What?” he mouths.

Dorothea turns her eyes towards the sky and raises her hands in exasperation. Then she jerks a hand back towards Hilda and Dimitri.

“Where were you,” the guard says, glancing over at Felix and then back to Dimitri, “the day before?”

“Bruin Forest,” Dimitri says. “Why?”

“Did you hear any news of an attack?”

“Ah, no. Recently?”

“Yes,” the guard says. “They say there was a terrible altercation between some innocent villagers and the Beast Prince of Faerghus.” He looks again at Dimitri’s single eye. “They say he mauled a half-dozen civilians with a swipe of his Heroes’ Relic just for speaking back to him.”

“_What,_” Felix demands.

“No way, Dickie would never! Does such a sweet, lovely, wonderful man like this look like he could hurt anyone?” Hilda says, her hand on Dimitri’s cheek.

“Yes,” the guard says.

“Richard is a lover,” Hilda insists, “not a fighter.” She nuzzles his neck.

Felix grits his teeth.

It’s fine. It’s a game, one of Dorothea’s operas, a performance that is utterly meaningless. Hilda like this, hanging off Dimitri, isn’t real. Her hand stroking down his chest isn’t real. And Dimitri—all of Dimitri is real, it always is, but the way he pats her shoulder is just him being kind.

It’s fine.

Dorothea leans in. In his ear, she says, “Come on, _Yuri_. That’s your ‘husband’ she’s hanging all over, remember? Wouldn’t any man be jealous to see that?” She takes hold of his hand and, gently, places it inside his pack. As if by instinct, it finds the hilt of his sword. “It’s your part.”

That’s right. This is Felix’s part. He has to convince the guard that Dimitri can’t be Faerghus's Prince because he’s too busy being Felix’s husband. Felix has to stop this.

Felix does.

“Get off of him,” he growls, stomping forward and getting between the guard and Hilda. He points his sword at her.

This isn’t overdramatic. He has seen it done by knights whose partners Sylvain has fooled around with. It’s the_ part._

Hilda looks over him with the same expression he’s seen her wear before telling someone how 'creative' their accessorizing choices are “Why? It’s not like you seem to get much use of him.”

“‘Use,’” Dimitri repeats, horrified.

“He’s _mine_,” Felix says.

“Um, but is he? Because it didn’t really sound like he was last night.”

Felix bares his teeth as Dimitri makes a noise oddly like a squeak. “He is and always has been mine. Nothing changes that. _Get off him._”

Hilda says, “Make me.”

So Felix grabs Dimitri by the shoulder and yanks him away from Hilda. And then, to prove the fucking point, he pushes himself up on his feet and gives Dimitri a kiss.

It is not a very good kiss. It is mostly lips and the hard press of teeth and Dimitri’s shocked noise into his mouth. But then there’s a hand on Felix’s shoulder, and Felix feels drawn _in_, feels the press of mouth to mouth become movement, so Felix moves his own mouth in answer—

—and then Dimitri stiffens. And so does Felix. They draw back.

They stare at each other.

The guard says, “Hey! Hey, I have no idea what’s going on here, but you’re not allowed to bring weapons through here. I’m going to have to detain you and confiscate your weapons.”

“Whoops!” Hilda says, yanking her axe out of her bag. Felix falls into position beside her. His blood sings to him. He is _ready_.

Then, Dimitri calls out in a voice to cut through a battlefield: “To your horses, now! Dorothea, Meteor!”

Dimitri is already throwing himself atop his own steed, and Hilda and Dorothea following suit. Felix’s horse is too far away from him here, Hilda has its reins, so Felix jumps onto the back of Dimitri’s horse instead. As he does, Dorothea extends her hand and a rain of burning rocks breaks through the barricade. Imperial soldiers throw themselves away from the broken wood and stone and flame.

“Ride!” Dimitri commands. They obey. As they make quick distance through the chaos, Felix looks back to see the soldiers trying to put out the fire or give the wounded elixirs or vulneraries. The travelers who had been behind them in line variously panic or use the chaos as their chance to break across the lines.

Felix turns back to the road ahead. The gallop is fast, so he wraps his arms around Dimitri to keep himself stable. Dimitri’s back muscles, Felix feels, are tense. More than they should be.

Felix calls, as loud as he can above the thunder of hooves, “There are some soldiers injured, but there won’t be casualties. We frightened the civilians but we didn't kill anyone.”

Dimitri’s back relaxes.

“We ride straight through Arundel until we reach the Professor,” he calls to Hilda and Dorothea. "We’ll decide then on our best route back.”

Battle instinct still hammers through Felix. It’s deep in his veins, sending his heart racing, making his hands thirst for the weight of a blade. They could have fought their way through that checkpoint. It would have been bloody and terrible, but it could have been done.

Instead, they have left chaos in their wake: injuries, fear, unavoidable casualties of conflict. But less death than his reflexes would have asked for.

Felix says, “I need to switch to my horse when we have some distance.” They’re too many on one horse riding fast. They’ll wear the animal out.

“I understand,” Dimitri answers. They ride on.

The feeling of Dimitri’s mouth, rough and familiar and new, is also with him. But he puts it away. A battle always comes first.

The kiss does not stay away. Felix sits with it as long as he can. He sits with it through the fight with the bandits on the plateau. He sits with it for all of the trip back to Garreg Mach, which Felix takes with Lysithea, on the Professor’s opinion that he, Dorothea, Hilda, and Dimitri should be split up to avoid attention from any reports that circulated from the surviving guards. Felix sits with that kiss back at the monastery, brushing down his horse, getting dinner with the Professor and Sylvain, going through sword practice, all the way up to the sitting in the war room for the whole of the day so he could sort through the papers sent from his uncle after his father’s death.

Felix is going to talk to Dimitri about that kiss. When he’s ready.

For now, he looks at an old notebook, worn and unmarked. The writing is legible but incomprehensible. _Your father had a dozen notebooks like this_, his uncle had explained in the attached note. _He told me once they kept secrets with no value to anyone but him. I thought they should be yours._

The curl of an ‘f’ in his father’s writing, so recognizable, paired with a ‘j’, two ‘n’s. It means nothing. Felix can’t even begin to guess the word.

Felix _is_ going to talk to Dimitri about that kiss. As soon as he’s done sorting through these documents. He’ll ask Dimitri what, exactly, it meant.

Soon.

It’s neither surprising nor tolerable that the knock, quiet and polite, that precedes Dimitri’s entrance into the war room comes halfway through Felix’s work. He looks up at Dimitri and is met with a quiet, steady smile.

“May I have a word, Felix?”

“Be quick about it,” Felix tells him, refusing to stand up. “I’m working.”

“I am aware. Thank you, as ever, for your steadfast work. It has been a great comfort to know that, when this war is done, I will have you at my side to aid in the smooth running of this kingdom.”

It is, as with most things Dimitri says, achingly sincere. “It’s my job.”

“Ah, yes. I also wanted to ask—Ingrid and I have discussed a memorial for Rodrigue. It is tradition, of course, given his acts of service, but you are his next of kin. It is important to me that we attend to your wishes on this.”

Felix’s eyes go down to the notebook. It’s still utterly incomprehensible. What kind of secrets could his father even _have_?

“I don’t care,” Felix says. “It’s exactly the kind of thing he would want.”

Gently, quietly, Dimitri says, “Rodrigue’s wishes are important, but they are the wishes of the dead. It is important that we also attend to the wishes of the living.”

Dimitri is watching him steadily again. Felix swallows, to get rid of a dry throat.

He says, “It’s what he would want. You and Ingrid would like going to something like that too.” He taps his pen against the notebook, three times. A blade would have fit his hand better.

Then, slowly, he adds, “I might go with you two and Sylvain one day. Later.”

Dimitri nods.

“Very well,” he says. “Thank you, Felix. You will have as much input on this as you wish.”

It feels like the end of a conversation. It should look like one, too. But Dimitri keeps standing there, with his hands locked together in front of him. Watching Felix.

Felix’s eyes narrow on him. “What do you want?”

“I… Of course, you are busy. Perhaps this isn’t the time.”

“Don’t be a coward,” Felix tells him. “Get to the point.”

Dimitri clears his throat. “You have always preferred directness, haven’t you. Then I will do my utmost to oblige.”

He steps around the table, over to Felix’s side.

“I have come to apologize,” Dimitri begins, “for my actions in days prior.”

There is something horrifically formal about how Dimitri says it. Felix remembers standing beside his father at the executioner’s block, watching a murderer in chains confess to his crimes.

“I apologize as well that it took so long to come to you about this. I might excuse this as a matter of urgent business, but in truth, I have been too cowardly to face you over this wrongdoing.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Regarding the checkpoint,” Dimitri continues, his voice deep and low, “and how I behaved there—” and all at once Felix knows—

“Don’t—”

“Please forgive me, Felix, for how I treated you, there. I behaved in an inappropriate and unacceptable manner. To take advantage in such a way is less than you deserve from me—”

“I said _don’t._”

Dimitri, blissfully, stops. Felix looks at him, at the wide surprised eye. Felix wishes so much that he had a sword in his hand and not a pen.

Felix demands, “Why do you always have to apologize for the _wrong thing_?”

Dimitri doesn’t say anything. Dimitri is looking at him, searching his face. Trying to understand him. _Trying_, but he must be—he’s locked up in his own head. Isn’t he? Isn’t he always there? Felix thought he had finally gotten out of it.

But it isn’t as simple as self-laceration. Because Dimitri _is_ trying.

“If not that,” Dimitri asks, slowly and carefully, “then what do you believe I must apologize for?”

Felix tells him, “What I can’t tolerate is what you’re doing right now.”

Slowly, Dimitri blinks. He considers what is before him. He breathes out. “Then,” he says, still speaking carefully, “You do not feel as if I took advantage—”

“Don’t say it.” Dimitri closes his mouth. Felix feels irritatingly hot. He says, “But no. I started it. Remember?”

“Certainly,” Dimitri says, “But I am aware that you… How you feel about me, Felix, is…”

Felix stares at him. Dimitri stares back. It is the tavern again, with Mercedes and Sylvain watching. It is Felix’s stupid mistake.

“I’m done,” Felix says, and gathers up his father’s papers. “You can speak with me when you’re finished with being a fool.”

He walks past Dimitri, walks forward, doesn’t stop and doesn’t look back, makes it all the way to the door before that voice hits—that voice that is so changed, that voice that is no longer the one he was raised to answer to. That voice that is not a prince’s, or a king’s, but Dimitri’s, soft with compassion, raw with years of screaming.

“Please wait,” Dimitri asks.

And Felix, though he wishes he wouldn’t, does.

“It is not,” Dimitri says, “as you believe. I think.” Here, the words aren’t careful. They’re stumbling and awkward. Poorly said, as if he is not sure of them even as they come. “I am not—it is not so, that your affections—Felix, I have been aware—”

“I don’t want to hear it—”

“Your affections are not unreciprocated,” Dimitri says.

Felix turns around, and he looks at the boy he has been in love with for all of his life.

Dimitri’s eye is on him. Its brow is drawn, the mouth beneath pressed tight. His shoulders are pulled in, with his hands closed together. He seems—small, like this. Even with his cape. He seems less than what is draped over his shoulders.

“If I—” Dimitri stops. He swallows. “If I were a better man—if I were a worthier man—”

“You can’t make that decision for me,” Felix interrupts. “Let me make my own choice.”

Dimitri searches his eyes. Felix does not know what he sees there. But Dimitri smiles, soft and sad, and answers, “You are quite right, Felix. I must not make such choices for you. I will endeavor to remember that in the future.”

“Then you really…”

Dimitri’s mouth, Felix remembers, had been imperfect. Soft but chapped, with uneven lines, salty along its cracks. Looking at Dimitri now, it seems to be the same. Would it taste like that?

“If I were a _free_ man,” Dimitri says. The world stops.

No. The world had _been_ stopped. Those words of Dimitri’s start the world they grew up in spinning again.

Dimitri swallows again, and he wears the same smile as before. He draws back a chair and then sits upon it. He invites Felix to do the same.

For a moment, they do not speak. They look at each other, at an angle, the odd table setting them adjacent but not quite together. Felix puts his hands over top of his father’s books.

“I am to be a king soon,” Dimitri says. “There is a great deal in this kingdom that is sick and in need of reform, as you know well. I wish to change how we run our government, how we distribute wealth. How Crests are treated, and the rights of commonfolk. I would like, as well, to change the laws of inheritance.”

And Felix, who is not a Duke’s son for nothing (_the Duke himself_, a voice reminds him, _your father is dead_), says, “And a king who wants to change the world publicly must be as conservative as possible in his private life.”

Grim and determined. Dimitri has had that look about him for a while now, but not like this. “I cannot be seen to have a personal stake in, for example, suggesting that inheritance of Crests—and therefore marriage between a pair that can between them beget a legitimate heir—no longer be required for certain positions. If I were to wed one who would not have a child with me, and so in that act choose to have no successor to my blood…”

Did Glenn ever feel this way? Did he ever feel a pull in the wrong direction, a pull to someone other than Ingrid, someone he would never get to have? Did he have to take that feeling and put it away in the name of his duty?

Did his father ever feel this way?

Dimitri continues, “But your friendship, as ever, means everything to me. My love for you will not change,” and Felix really does hate Dimitri then, he hates Dimitri for saying it, for naming this, for naming what they both want but can’t _have_, “and our friendship has ever been part of that love. I would work to keep that, if you would allow me.”

As if Felix could survive without even that. His hands curl up at his sides. He makes them relax.

“You can’t make choices for me.” Felix sets it like a condition in a contract. The words feel distant to his ears. “You can’t decide how I feel or determine for yourself what I’m angry about. And you can’t—hide things from me simply because you believe you know my reaction. I want the truth.”

Dimitri’s smile, too, seems like it is far away. “I will endeavor to do as you ask. Will you, if you are willing, try to tell me of your own feelings? I feel as if I know you better now, and yet it seems I am often at risk of coming to conclusions based more on my fears than the truth of your heart. I would ask for your honesty in return, if you would give it.”

Felix pauses. Then swallows, and nods.

“The road ahead will be difficult,” Dimitri says. “Personally and politically, there is much we must do to improve.”

“I already told you I’m doing this with you. You’re not the only person sick of the follies of this world.”

There is a price for that.

He looks at Dimitri here, calm and quiet, gentle and ready to open up. Dimitri who has promised to work on their friendship—Dimitri who has asked Felix to work with him. Who asked Felix to talk to him. To say how he feels.

Dimitri, who even now is underneath his father’s blue cloak. Fur-lined, embroidered with the family crest.

“I need a break from this paperwork,” Felix says, pushing himself to his feet. He steps back with nothing in his hands. Then he reaches out to grab his father’s notebook. “I’m going to the training grounds. Don’t stay up late overworking yourself. You’re a fool to imagine that does more good than harm in the long term.”

Dimitri smiles at him. It is his own smile.

It is not a smile Felix can kiss.

Dimitri says, “I understand.” 

Felix does, too. He just wishes he didn’t.

Derdriu, the Aquatic Capital, is, despite the hopes Sylvain expressed, not a sight-seeing location at the moment. It’s an urban battleground, and Felix is sent to work on it, slicking the stones with the blood of Empire soldiers and hoping that what he slips on is not the blood of their own soldiers. The fight is fierce, allowing for no slack.

When Hilda gets to the bridge that separates Claude from the Empire forces, she turns her back on enemy lines and starts jumping in the air, waving her axe above her head.

“Claude! Hey, Claude! You owe me fifteen gold bullions!”

Claude yelps. He calls back, “You’re kidding me!”

“Nope!” Hilda shouts back.

“I don’t believe you. Show me evidence!”

Dorothea, beside her, says, “Oh, Felix kissed him alright. You lost, Claude!”

Hilda points at Felix. Felix, standing with bloodied sword in hand, cannot _stand_ this damn city’s heat. Claude stares at his face and then gapes.

“He really did do it!”

Felix says, “I didn’t do anyth—she provoked—it was—shut up!”

Hilda shouts, “I want my gold, Claude!” before casually swinging her axe through an enemy soldier’s skull.

Dimitri, murdering his step-uncle (Felix has questions) to utterly baffling dying words, does not hear this, so he does not notice Claude’s knowing grin when they speak after the day is won. Felix has no such luxury. He marches the whole way home without looking anyone in the eye.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The betting pool on how long it would take Felix to figure out/act on his feelings was started at the Academy. Claude was the person who first brought it up and got to keep the pot until the close of the bet. The bets were as follows:
> 
> Hilda: Five years. (Dorothea, who hadn’t bet at the time, gets some of Hilda’s money for helping her win.)  
Linhardt: Seventy years, on Dimitri’s death bed. Hilda pointed out that he might not last seventy years. Linhardt shrugged and said, “Whenever Dimitri dies, then.”  
Mercedes: She thinks they’ll figure it out when they’re ready! Which she guessed to be fifteen years later.  
Annette: Four years and she was VERY invested in being right. The war, and Dimitri being presumed dead, ruined her plans for winning. She had a whole romcom scheme worked out.  
Sylvain: Two years. He chose it out of loyalty to Felix, because everyone else was betting so high.  
Ingrid: Absolutely never, and also this is really inappropriate so they should stop.  
Ashe: Refused to bet because betting is a bad financial practice. …But it took Sir Nemain seven years to figure out his crush, so probably that.  
Balthus: A week. How hard can figuring out your feelings be?
> 
> The sonnet that Dorothea sings is borrowed from [this song by a band of some popular and critical acclaim](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSXMp0h-NXs). Dimitri’s confession was inspired by [this song you may know](https://genius.com/Dave-malloy-pierre-and-natasha-lyrics), by which I mean I could not stop hearing it in my head while I wrote this.
> 
> The idea of 'Bloe' as Byleth's cover name, Bloe's cover story, and the related dialogue exchange, are all courtesy of [sfxlled](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sfxlled/pseuds/sfxlled), as is Byleth trying to switch Lysithea to a Great Knight. Thanks for braving through and giving me Dark Mage Dedue on that Maddening run!
> 
> [amorekay](https://archiveofourown.org/users/amorekay) did me the GREAT kindness of beta reading this chapter. Which. Wow. 
> 
> Can you believe there are only two more chapters left? I can't! Remember, I promised a happy ending, and I WILL deliver. [I'm still on twitter!](https://twitter.com/marezafic)


	7. zero

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Felix has to work on a census.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: We’re about to get canon compliant here. VERY canon compliant. You remember that Dimilix ending! This means compulsory heterosexuality and beard marriages. But also it's a happy ending, at least in my opinion! There is some teasing of various ships in the group scene because I can't help myself, but dimilix is still the only explicit ship here. Everything else is up for interpretation.
> 
> This chapter contains references and descriptions of PTSD, a great deal of discussion of grief, and compulsory heterosexuality. There are discussions of genocide, reparations, revenge, and justice. Mortality comes up a lot.

The war is over. The Emperor is dead. Many people are rejoicing; many others are grieving. Some, Felix is sure, are plotting insurrection. But, heavy in the cost of blood though it was, at last the nightmare has ended.

Unfortunately, the end of a nightmare means the start of reality. They’ll all have to scatter across the continent to the homes they were born to or that they’d chosen, but the class agreed to all convene for a while longer at Garreg Mach. It’s the most central location in Fódlan, so it’s no surprise that it’s the best place for making their decisions on their immediate next movements. Several of their class have already started to discuss meeting here again officially to determine Fódlan's next steps.

So Felix gets news from his uncle in a letter.

_To His Grace, the Duke of Fraldarius,_ the letter reads. Felix considers throwing the letter out.

It continues:

_Dear Felix,_

_Thank you for not throwing this letter out. I promised your father I would help guide you into your office as Duke if he couldn’t do it himself. So, as your uncle and current steward of Fraldarius lands, let me advise this:_

_Get started on the paperwork now._

_Our treasury is depleted, and Fraldarius has been scarred. We need to know how many people our land must feed and protect, and we need to know how many of those people can till our fields, dig our quarries, hunt our forests, and take places in our barracks. The first step for that is taking a census of your people and a survey of your lands._

_Your father always kept good records, but war is harsh on information. I’ve sent with this letter his estimates of the population from the past five years as well as the surveys that our soldiers took during the war. However, as these are estimates, it’s best for you to work from the last complete census and map, those of 1180. Both of these should be with your father’s papers that I had sent to you earlier. Please find these and, based on the records of our treasury that I’m sending with these letters, make a new estimate of where we stand in terms of supplies. These should provide a good maximum amount for how over-pressed we are. Do NOT use this census to estimate our resources in terms of a working population. Check it against the soldiers’ surveys to see which cities have likely been destroyed, and when you have done so—_

The amount of mathematics and paperwork demanded by reality is insulting. It sends Felix to Garreg Mach’s library with a stack of his father’s papers, trying to figure out where the censuses would have been. Then he thinks that maybe he should be looking not where his father left them but where his uncle would have put them in his father's things. In the official papers, probably. With the legal documents and land deeds? Sylvain helped Felix look through those. He would have reorganized them, but where to—

There is no expressing the relief Felix feels when Ignatz calls down the passage into the library and says, “The Professor is calling a meeting in five minutes.” Felix practically throws himself out of his seat and makes his way to the war room.

“Alright,” says Dimitri, his sigh resigned. “The Professor insisted on this as our first order of business, so I must ask. Who here needs to get married?”

Felix wants his papers back.

Numerous hands raise across the room, some more disconsolately than others. It’s no surprise to see Ingrid’s and Dorothea’s hands up, nor Mercedes’s after. Felix is also not surprised to see the hands of all the nobles who either have a strong sense of duty to their lines or have had that sense of duty forced into them: Ferdinand, Bernadetta, Sylvain, Marianne, and Lorenz.

He has no idea why Constance’s hand isn’t up. Maybe she doesn’t believe it’s needed for restoring her house.

Dimitri doesn’t raise his hand, either. But everyone has to know. Dimitri is the new king of an extremely unstable continent that was unified under war and chaos. Whatever reforms he might introduce, and even if he decided to hand self-rule back to Leicester and Adrestia, the continent is a mess. He needs stability. And Fódlan is used to seeing stability as a leader who is in the business of getting himself a Crested heir.

“The Professor suggested,” Dimitri begins, then pauses. He glances at the Professor, who gives him a thumbs up. “The Professor suggested we discuss our various motives for marriage and determine if we can find any pragmatic matches for ourselves.”

“Are you…” Petra pauses, then tilts her head. “Professor, are you attempting to be strategizing our marriage matches?”

Byleth holds up a spreadsheet with all their names and a lot of arrows and question marks. They smile. “I want to make sure you all get happy endings.”

Dimitri sighs.

“Please keep in mind that I will be doing my utmost to reform and restructure society—with your assistance, of course,” he says. “If you have no wish to wed, and it is in my power to grant you what is needed to avoid the obligations of marriage, I will not hesitate to grant what boons I can at the soonest opportunity.”

“But you should still think about who you want to be with,” Byleth interrupts. “You’re all happier when you’re with other people.”

“I’m not,” Felix snaps.

Byleth looks at him.

Felix folds his arms.

Very carefully, Sylvain ventures, “Uh, okay, putting aside the whole ‘is marriage the best way to not be alone’ question, although, yeah, think about that one—maybe tackling the practical issues here isn’t a bad start. Like, we all know I have to get married because of a Crest thing. We agreed that we’re getting rid of Crest things.”

Dimitri, his head still in his hands: “Yes, Sylvain. We are ‘getting rid of Crest things.’ You will be leading the charge on that, in fact.”

“Aw, Your Highness—Majesty,” Sylvain whines. “You know I’m just a lazy, no-good skirt-chaser! I don’t have the smarts for that kind of thing.”

Dimitri gives Sylvain a flat look.

Sylvain sighs, which is as dramatic as it is obviously fake. Felix elbows him. “Ow—Okay, okay, I get it. Yes, Your Majesty. I’ll spearhead the charge against Crest things.”

“Thank you,” Dimitri says. “In the interim, I will do my utmost to persuade your father that I need you at hand. Managing the East should keep him occupied enough that he will have no place to press, but we must see to it that you’re well-positioned to take his powers when the time comes.” Dimitri turns his attention back to the gathered group. “Who else?”

“Um.” Bernadetta’s voice is so tiny, her words so unsure, that Felix has to lean in towards her to catch the words. Dimitri, raising his head, seems to be thinking the same thing. “So—um, about my father…”

“Your father,” Ferdinand says, “has no power over you any longer. He shall not force you to do anything you do not wish to, Bernadetta.”

“I once performed in a play where a visiting performer poisoned a villainous father,” Dorothea offers.

“In Brigid,” Petra informs them, “parents who are hurting their children get put in nets and thrown into the ocean for fish to be eating.”

“Is that true?” Ignatz asks, eyes wide.

Petra pauses. “It will become truth soon.”

“Your father’s political position,” Dimitri interrupts, “is sufficiently weak that it will be no trouble to ensure he not bother you again. You will not be pushed into anything you do not desire; I will see to that myself if I must. Next?”

Ingrid, her posture rigid and upright, raises her hand. “You know Galatea’s situation, Your Highness—Majesty.”

(They have all been having trouble with the change in address. The obvious solution, in Felix’s opinion, is just to call Dimitri by his name. Ingrid and Sylvain keep ignoring him.)

“Yes,” Dimitri muses, eyes distant as if he is going over Galatea’s economic history in his head. “Your territory’s financial difficulties.” He taps his fingers against the table, considering the possibilities.

Felix, who really doesn’t see any reason that Ingrid should have to marry anyone she doesn’t want to anyway, says, “Take Viscount Kleiman’s money. It will all be stripped when we put him on trial.”

“But that’s wealth he earned mistreating the people of Duscur,” Ashe points out. “We can’t just hand it out to someone else. It should go back to Duscur.”

Everyone looks at him.

“At least, that’s what I think,” Ashe adds, quietly.

Dedue smiles at him. Ashe relaxes.

“Ashe is correct,” Dimitri agrees. “The crown has no right to the wealth Kleiman extracted by abusing the labor of the survivors of Duscur. It is of utmost importance that all gains made from their exploitation be returned to them, to be dispensed with as they see fit. Thus Kleiman’s wealth will be handed over to the people of Duscur. But,” he adds, cheerful and bright, “As I have witness testimony that Viscount Kleiman is guilty of high treason, it shall be no difficult matter to prove the innocence of the people of Duscur and see them given their due. I’ll offer Kleiman to them for trial as a token of our regret.”

“Hold on,” Sylvain says, to an entire room of frowns, which leads to him raising his hands defensively. “No, don't get mad, I don't mean that. Listen. I think it’s great we’ve got him for treason too! It’s real convenient for getting that land back. But don’t you think it’d be better to put him on trial first, _then_ declare the innocence of Duscur? If you do it the other way, people’ll think it’s a sham trial meant as a land grab. If you try him first, make sure it’s airtight, then take the land from him, then the trial will coincidentally prove the innocence of Duscur. You can use that as justification for your next steps.”

“I do see the logic,” Dimitri says, slowly. “But I still feel it would be most appropriate to give Kleiman to the people of Duscur, as it is they who were most injured by his deeds.”

“Wait,” Annette says. “Does that mean you don’t want to execute Kleiman yourself? Even though he was behind what happened to your family?”

“No,” Dimitri says. “I will leave his fate to those most injured by him.” Very seriously and completely without irony, he proclaims, “I have abandoned my quest for vengeance. Now, I only seek to move us towards a lasting peace.”

“Besides,” Sylvain adds. “If Kleiman has to wait through the years of rebuilding before the people of Duscur can put him on trial, he’ll be imprisoned with a death sentence hanging over his head without even knowing exactly how painful his end is going to be. The uncertainty’s its own kind of torture.”

“Wow,” Annette says. “That’s really cruel.”

“He _did_ do awful things,” Ashe says, slowly.

“I like it,” Ingrid chimes in.

Felix says, “Impressively vicious, Sylvain.”

They all look to Dedue, who has not made any promises about giving up a quest for vengeance.

“Sylvain’s suggestion satisfies me,” Dedue says.

“Then it’s settled,” says Dimitri.”

Byleth clears their throat.

“Yes—ah—” Dimitri coughs. “But back to the business at hand. Ingrid, am I right in assuming that your desire is still to serve as a knight?”

“It is, Your Majesty.”

Dimitri presses his fingers to his forehead, tapping them against his skull. “I can’t go around handing out stolen wealth, neither that of the former Dukedom lords nor the wealth that has come from the lords of the Empire. It may be ours by right of conquest, but that is no path to lasting peace. If only something could be done for the Galatea lands to increase crop yields, it would be enough to get things going…”

“Oh, is farming what you’re having trouble with?”

Dimitri looks up. Raphael, cheerful in his place beside Ignatz, looks over at Ingrid and then back to Dimitri.

“If they’re having trouble there, I can come help out. I’m great at farming.”

“Oh,” Dimitri says, and blinks. “I thought you, too, wished to be a knight.”

“Sure, but there’s no reason a knight can’t stop by and help the harvest, is there?”

“That’s… true…” Dimitri says, slowly, as if the idea of someone having more than one job had never occurred to him. “Ah, Ashe! In such a case, there is no need for you to refuse knighthood to follow your aspirations in cooking. If it is your desire, I could more than grant you permission to run your restaurant and only return to my service in times of great need.”

“Your Majesty,” Ashe says, “Even if it’s just common practice, I really don’t want you to make an exception just for me—”

Dimitri continues, “You can call your restaurant ‘A Knight On The Town.’”

Ashe stares at him.

“I guess I can help too,” sighs Linhardt, not raising his head from the pillow he has made of his arms. “With Ingrid’s concern, I mean. I’ll just visit A Knight On The Town. Which really should have a shorter name.”

“‘A Knight Out?’” offers Ignatz.

Ashe says, “I haven’t decided if I want a restaurant! Or what its name is!”

“If it is a question of agriculture, it would be my pleasure to offer my assistance,” Ferdinand says. “I’ve done a great deal of research into practices in the present and past across Fódlan and other continents! Has Galatea tried crop rotation yet?”

“I’m sorry?” asks Ingrid.

“Crop rotation,” Ferdinand begins, “is a process by which different crops are planted in turn so that the soil’s nutrients can be replenished—” Ferdinand then pauses, gathering himself, and says, “I would be happy to explain it at another time, of course.”

“Then that is the matter of Ingrid’s marital obligations settled,” Dimitri concludes. “And loans can be granted from the crown until such times as these plans come to fruition. Who else needs to wed?”

“Forgive the interruption, Your Majesty,” begins Lorenz, “But I require no aid or strategy in finding a wife. I will choose the ideal bride to rule over Gloucester beside me on her own merits, when the time is right.”

“I agree with Lorenz’s sentiments,” Ferdinand proclaims. “This is a duty that it is my honor to take up. I have no doubts that I’ll find the ideal bride.”

“The noble lineage of House Nuvelle requires no assistance in acquiring a partner for its rejuvenation!” Constance declares.

Felix hates when those three sit together.

Very mildly, Dimitri agrees, “If you insist,” and glances over at the names on the Professor’s spreadsheet not yet scratched off. “That leaves… Dorothea, Marianne, and Mercedes.” He looks up at the three of them.

“Not interested,” Dorothea says.

“Oh,” Dimitri says.

“It’s very sweet that the Professor is doing this for us all, and very—” She pauses. “Very them. But I’ve made it this far on my own. I’ll choose my own partner.”

There are multiple women who smile at Dorothea when she says this. Somehow, she exchanges looks with all of them at the same time. Felix doesn’t want to know.

Dimitri, meanwhile, dutifully goes down the list. “And so, Marianne, Mercedes…” His voice is very soft, and he looks between them both. “What path do you wish for yourselves, my friends?”

“I’d like…” When Marianne speaks, the whole room quiets. No one wants to talk over her. “I’d like to go home, and… I want to find my own voice. And then I’ll make my decision on what to do next. I think… I think I’m strong enough to stand up to my adoptive father now.”

Hilda squeezes her hand.

“Of course,” Dimitri murmurs. “You have our full support in all your desires, Marianne.”

They smile at each other, and Marianne draws her hand back into her lap. Hilda doesn’t let go.

At last, Dimitri turns to Mercedes. “I know you wish to help others,” he begins. “But I understand that you’ve experienced pressure from your father to wed for his gain. I have gathered that he can be quite aggressive in his insistence on this matter.”

“We must not allow _anyone_ to harass such a noble soul as Mercedes,” Constance insists. Ferdinand and Lorenz offer a chorus of agreement.

Hilda asks, “What was that play you mentioned, Dorothea?”

“No,” Ingrid says. “Poison is too private. We execute him.”

“Guys,” says Ashe, “Can we stop bringing up murder as an option?”

“An execution ordered by the king isn’t murder,” Ingrid insists.

“Ooh,” says Annette, “Or we could set up a series of deadly traps around his house!”

“Woah,” says Caspar, “There’s no need to kill him.”

Ashe sighs in relief.

Caspar continues, “We can just beat him up!”

Ashe sighs in despair.

“Mercedes,” Dimitri interrupts. “Please, tell us what you wish for your own life.”

Mercedes hums. She puts her chin in one hand, then the other. She leans back. “I suppose what I’m used to is following others’ lead. Sometimes, it feels difficult to think about how I would break away from my father to make my own path. But I’d like to find the place where I could do the most good for the world.”

“I see,” says Dimitri.

Mercedes clasps her hands together. She smiles tightly. Felix glances at Dimitri, but Dimitri is only looking at her.

“I’m so sorry! It’s silly of me to keep talking about myself. I’m sure the right answer will come along somehow. What about your situation, Dimitri?”

Because Felix is already looking at Dimitri, he sees it. The moment Dimitri’s mask slips. The moment the king becomes a man who must do what he doesn’t want to.

“My situation?” says Dimitri, voice tight.

“You’re the king now. Do you think you’ll get married to anyone?”

“Ah… I… As king, you understand, I have an obligation…”

Felix’s fingers tighten on the table.

“That isn’t fair,” Ingrid interrupts. “If you’re changing things so none of us have to get married if we don’t want to, why should you?”

“Are you not the man who is ruling over your own kingdom?” asks Petra. “It is so that you should be able to choose your most beloved person, whatever may be others’ pressures on you.”

“You’re the boss!” agrees Balthus. “Plus, there’s no one but me who can beat you in a wrestling match. What you say goes!”

“I—” Dimitri begins.

“You should get to be happy,” Annette says. “You deserve it, and I don’t want you to be stuck being miserable your whole life out of duty!”

Marriane says, “It would be so sad if after all you’ve done, you don’t get to choose happiness for yourself.”

“I will not—refuse happiness. It is an honor, to rule this kingdom and to bring happiness to my people—”

Felix slams his hands against the table and pushes to his feet. They stare at him.

“Stop dancing around it,” Felix demands. “You’re a king, aren’t you? Tell your subjects what you’ve decided.”

“Felix…” Dimitri begins.

“You know what you want,” Felix tells him. “So _say_ it.”

Dimitri looks at him. He swallows. Felix doesn’t let himself look away.

Very slowly, Dimitri says, “The changes I make will be unpopular among those who hold to tradition. If I am to see them through…”

Sylvain says, his voice terribly soft, “You have to look impartial. You can’t look like you’ve got anything to gain from the changes you’re making.”

“Yes,” Dimitri says. 

“I’m sorry, Your Majesty,” Sylvain tells him. But his eyes, full of pity, flicker Felix’s way.

“I’m leaving,” Felix tells them. When Byleth looks at him curiously, Felix says, “I have to figure out a census.”

“Ah, I know a great deal about censuses,” Ferdinand offers. “If you need assistance, it would be my great pleasure to help—"

Felix is already gone.

The census data is not, it turns out, with the land deeds, or with the other legal documents, which Felix discovers after a good hour of sorting through the papers. It’s only when Sylvain drops by that he learns it’s in the financial reports. Sylvain places the papers on Felix’s library desk alongside a cup of Four-Spice Blend.

“Thanks,” Felix says, pulling the census data over, careful of the cup.

“No problem,” Sylvain answers. “Need any other help?”

“I’m fine,” Felix tells him. The numbers on the page swim before his eyes.

They won’t for long. He’ll make them _stop_ swimming. He’ll make them regret they ever met water.

“You sure?” Sylvain asks, interrupting Felix’s battle plans. “You look pretty tired.”

“I’m _fine_,” Felix says. He looks up at Sylvain.

Sylvain watches him.

With a huff, Felix looks back down. He mutters, “I’m focusing on this. For now. If you want to help you can train with me this evening.”

The smile that comes with Sylvain’s answer is in his voice, clear and warm as hearthfire. “Just for you, Lushka.”

Felix sees the hair ruffle coming and blocks it before Sylvain can get to him. “I’m not eight anymore. Stop it.”

“What? No way! But you don’t look any different!” Sylvain exclaims. “And you’re the same size, too!”

“So you want to start training _now,_” Felix says grimly, bracing his hands on the table. Sylvain yelps and holds his hands up before Felix can stand, backing away with dancing feet and a grin.

“Got it, got it! You’re all grown up and very scary.”

“Good,” Felix says. He looks back down at the numbers. They’ve all got regions, so he just needs to pull out the map and compare it against which regions saw battle. Felix rustles through his father’s papers.

“Hey, Felix?”

Sylvain’s expression, where he stands at the far side of the table, is quieter now. Soft, even.

“What?” he asks.

“About the meeting.” Sylvain makes eye contact. “We kept talking after you left. I just wanted to let you know—”

From the hall, Felix hears the familiar clearing of a throat. He looks up to see Dimitri there—Dimitri, and Mercedes at his side. Something about the way they’re standing sets off warning bells in Felix’s head.

“Sylvain,” Dimitri greets.

“Your Majesty! And Mercedes, looking beautiful as ever,” Sylvain says. The grin Sylvain flashes Felix after is insultingly plastered on, and those warning bells in his head turn to full alarms. “See you at the training grounds, Felix!”

He is out in a casual jaunt of steps, a brush against Mercedes’s shoulder, a pat on Dimitri’s back. Then it is just the three of them: Felix at the desk, Mercedes and Dimitri in the door frame.

Felix’s eyes narrow. “Dimitri.”

“Felix,” Dimitri greets. “If we may have a word?”

“I don’t want to talk to you right now.”

“Oh,” says Dimitri.

“Stop,” Felix snaps. “It’s not your fault. I’m just—irritated. Alright? Go away.”

“Very well,” Dimitri says, and steps outside. Mercedes does not.

“What,” Felix asks, taking up his pen again. “I’m working.”

Mercedes says, “Dimitri and I think we should get married.”

Felix stops writing.

Mercedes, from where she watches him, has a kind expression on her face, warm and full of sympathy.

Felix wants to throw an ink well at it. Felix wants to go train. Felix wants this farce to _stop_.

“Fine,” he says. “Get married. Good luck.”

“Felix,” Mercedes says, very gently. “Don’t you think you should talk to Dimitri about it at least a little?”

“Why?” Felix asks. “You’ve both decided what you want. It has nothing to do with me.”

“I think it does,” Mercedes tells him.

Felix, who is not the boar, doesn’t snap the pen in his hand. He puts it down.

No. _Dimitri_. Not _the boar_. Felix growls in frustration, pressing his hands into his face. He should be able to just get _rid_ of that habit.

“Fine,” Felix snarls. “Send him back in.”

Mercedes steps out into the hall and calls to Dimitri: their friend, her fiancé. When Dimitri returns to Felix’s claimed space, he does so on his own.

“Felix,” Dimitri says, like it’s the beginning of a sentence. But there’s nowhere for them to go.

The window lighting is pathetic in the library. Readers must rely on candlelight to do their work. If it weren’t for the light in the hallway, Felix wouldn’t know how long Dimitri stood there, watching him as if he’s waiting for a cue.

At least Dimitri knows better than to apologize. They’ve figured out that much.

Eventually, Felix says, “A bride from the Empire will help ease tensions. She might technically be a commoner, but the noble bloodline will count for something among the kind of hardliner who would care about who you wed.”

“Yes,” Dimitri agrees. “I did not want to push this notion upon her—”

“Good.”

“But she… It seemed that she wished for this too. Mercedes said that, on the whole, she was happy with the idea. She liked the idea of being able to do good works as queen.”

“Fine,” Felix says. “If that’s all, I’m working.” There are numbers that need to be put to places. Little measures of households, happy families and miserable ones, who are hypothetically still there but very possibly dead or gone, all of whom Felix has to figure out how to feed and protect. Even the ones that might already be lost.

“Felix,” Dimitri says. “It would—I would like to know how you feel, if you would be willing to share.”

Felix grits his teeth. He looks up at Dimitri: earnest expression, open sorrow.

Dimitri is _trying._

Dammit.

“It makes me feel.” Felix’s fingers twitch around his pen. “Not. Happy.”

“I see.” Dimitri closes his eyes, and he nods. “It also makes me unhappy.”

“Great,” Felix says. “So we both know we’re unhappy. Congratulations to us.”

“It’s important,” Dimitri says, “that we work to communicate our feelings. It is the only way for us to go forward.”

Felix scoffs, “You wouldn’t be here looking like a mistreated hound if there was anywhere for us to go.”

Dimitri has nothing to say to that.

Felix knows that communication is important for their friendship. He knows that understanding and trust and respect are supposed to be the point of all this. He knows that friendship is what they promised, and even if they’re helpless against their situations, at least they know how the other feels.

Pointlessly. Everything they feel is _pointless_.

“Don’t pretend you don’t hate this too,” Felix says. “You’re too much a romantic not to resent your fate. Marriage is nothing but an archaic convention to me, but don’t tell me that _you_ don't want to marry for love.”

“Of course I hate it,” Dimitri says. “If I could make Mercedes queen yet not wed her—”

“If it’s hypotheticals you want to dwell in, abdicate to become a philosopher. There’s no point ruling over a dream.”

“This is my duty, Felix.”

“Fuck your duty,” Felix snaps. “Stop hiding behind your damn obligations for once in your life and admit what you want.”

Dimitri is quieted. He blinks, slowly. He does not smile. Then he nods, and it is not a king’s mantle that weighs on him. It is simply the fact of having lived.

“You are right,” Dimitri says. “I have asked for your honesty in your feelings, yet I have not honestly expressed my own.”

Felix waits. He watches Dimitri’s face.

“I love you, Felix,” Dimitri says, and Felix feels it, and he hates what he feels, and Dimitri keeps talking, saying, “I have always loved you. For many years, I said nothing of it. I knew that you would not give an heir to Faerghus, and I could not imagine ever leaving my throne. But fate intervened in the course of our lives, and now I know that the crown is an adornment I need not wear. Abdication would be a difficult course, certainly. I believe there would be a great deal of strife and suffering in the struggle for power that follows. Yet I will not deny that the choice is mine to make.”

But Felix knows better than to be relieved.

He says, “You want to be king.”

“I want,” Dimitri answers, “to make a world where none must endure what we have. I believe that accepting the power I was born to is the best way to accomplish that. Mercedes, too, wishes to dedicate herself to the improvement of the world. And, knowing that she will temper my faults with her own merits and offer good counsel where it is needed, I cannot imagine a better queen.”

This is why he is in love with Dimitri. To lose this part of Dimitri would be to lose the heart he has loved since before he knew what love was.

It still fucking _hurts_.

“So,” Felix says. “You’re just going to give your whole life to this country. That’s what you want.”

Dimitri quiet and steady, answers. “I want a great many things, Felix. This is what I choose.”

It is what Felix has always known Dimitri would choose. To work rather than rest. To serve rather than be served. To suffer and struggle and deny himself peace so that peace can be achieved for everyone else.

Dimitri is going to kill himself to make this world a better place. The world will glorify his death.

And Felix will be left to grieve him. 

“Fine,” Felix says. “Become king. Marry the perfect queen to serve your people. They can have you.” Felix pushes himself to his feet.

Unfortunately, he pushes himself up too hard and knocks the whole of the table over in the process.

“Ah—” Dimitri says.

“Dammit!” Felix says.

They dive forward, bump heads, and stumble back. Felix clutches his forehead and curses while Dimitri, being Dimitri, apologizes for the accident rather than acting on the mess. It is the mess that Felix understands too late: paper strewn across the floor, and tea—a deep black just the way Felix likes it—drowning his father’s census.

“Is everything alright?” Mercedes asks.

“Everything,” Felix says, “Is nowhere near alright. The work I’ve been trying to get done all day has been interrupted by _you two_, and now the papers are ruined. It will take a week before my uncle can get the census papers back to us here.”

“That sounds like you’re not telling the entire truth,” Mercedes says, “but nobles are supposed to send copies of their territory’s censuses to the church, and I can’t see your father not sending his. Yuri might have them; Constance told me that he rescued as many of the Church’s important documents as he could when the Empire attacked.”

“I don’t need your help,” Felix spits.

He pauses.

“Thank you,” he tells her.

“You’re welcome,” Mercedes says. “But Felix, if you’re upset about me and Dimitri, I wanted to tell you—”

“Felix,” Dimitri begins, “wait one moment, your papers—”

“I’m busy,” Felix interrupts, and leaves Mercedes, Dimitri, and the mess of the table without looking back.

“We might have the census papers,” Yuri says. “We might not. What’ll you give us for them if you do?”

Felix hates going down into the Abyss. There are more taking refuge there than there are rogues, but there are plenty of criminals enough. He spends the entire time watching his back. But it wasn’t like Felix was going to be able to find Yuri anywhere above ground, so Felix had no choice but to track Yuri down to the Ashen Wolves ‘classroom.’

“What,” Felix asks.

“We’re helping you out,” Yuri tells him. “So shouldn’t you return the favor?”

Yuri has one of those smiles on his face that’s charming and sharp. It is not unlike the kind Sylvain uses with women, but there’s a clear difference between them. While Sylvain wants to hide how dangerous he is from the women he chases, Yuri wants people to be aware of how much trouble he is. He simply doesn’t want anyone to be able to prove it.

Felix doesn’t like talking to Yuri.

“Fine,” Felix says. “What do you want?”

“Hm.” Yuri taps his finger against his jaw. It’s a light, easy gesture. Non-threatening, with Yuri’s slender finger and his gentle touch.

“I heard,” Yuri starts, “that your father had some notebooks in code that he left to you—”

“How did you hear about that?”

“Since you can’t crack the code, why don’t you pass them to me?”

Felix bares his teeth. Yuri smiles at him.

“No,” Felix snaps. “Try again.”

“Alright,” Yuri says, still smiling. “How about this: you’ll be needing a secretary to help you keep track of errands. I know a kid, great with numbers, who is in need of some honest work. Why don’t you hire him, and I’ll hand the documents over to you?”

“You must take me for a fool,” Felix scoffs. “I’m not letting you plant a spy in the office of House Fraldarius. I don’t need your help; I can get the documents from my uncle.”

But as Felix turns to leave, Yuri says, “There are a lot of sick people down here who have trouble getting the help they need. I hear your father did a lot of work with Faith magic, and has a book of personal musings on ways to improve the healing arts. Trade me that, and I’ll give you our papers.”

Felix stops. He turns to look at Yuri. He reads his smile.

Felix bites his lower lip.

He says, “My old man’s notes were all theoretical. They may not be useful to anyone .”

“I like to play long odds,” Yuri says, lying.

But even sensing that, Felix searches Yuri. He asks his instincts what call to make.

Felix says, “I’ll give the books over to Manuela. You two can look through it together and have whatever seems useful.”

“Pleasure doing business with you, Your Grace,” Yuri says with a wink. Felix avoids murder, with effort.

“Don’t.”

“I liked your father, you know,” Yuri says, completely ignoring Felix’s comment. “He was a much more decent noble than the average sort. It’s almost a shame, really. A guy like that has the keys to the kingdom. It could have come in real handy if he was—a bit more amenable to my influence, shall we say.”

Felix, who grew up around Sylvain, knows enough to say, “Die. Die right now. Stop having ever existed.”

“What about you, Felix?” Yuri asks. “Do you have any affairs you’re interested in?”

“Absolutely not.”

“You sure about that?” With his head canted to the side, there’s something uneven in Yuri's smile. “You know, your king has made a lot of promises about helping out the most unfortunate members of society. People like us here in the Abyss. I think he might make a lot of people happy. And as long as he kept to his word, I wouldn’t mind helping him find happiness of his own.”

Felix scowls. “I already told you to back off. So back off.”

“That's a harsh answer to an offer of friendship." Yuri answers, irritatingly lightly. “Surely you're not telling me you've never even _considered_ it." 

A sword and plate mail. Charred and broken bones. Is that what Dimitri will come back to Felix as? Or will death come to him slower, the consequence of years of self-neglect? They'll make statues of him for all the good he will do. They'll praise whatever death he finds as great and honorable. A worthy end.

He'll die like a true king.

“Just give me the damn papers,” Felix snaps.

“I don’t have them,” Yuri says. “When the Knights of Seiros returned, I handed all of the administrative records we rescued back to Seteth. You’ll have to go talk to him.”

Felix tries not to scream. Instead, he stalks back out into the moonlight, over to the Reception Hall, and up to the second floor offices. There, a page informs him that Seteth has already gone to bed.

When Felix accosts Sylvain in the student bedrooms, Sylvain shoves his book under the desk as if Felix is going to miss that he’s reading up on Sreng’s history and says, “Hey, where were you? You missed training.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Felix says. “I want to spar now. Get moving.”

Sylvain is good enough to make a show of whining that he’d rather pick up girls than his lance. But he doesn’t complain once that Felix keeps him training until they’re both too exhausted to think.

Seteth has the same routine every weekday: he goes to the Cathedral with his breakfast and prepares his notes for morning mass, which he then conducts, followed immediately by meetings that go straight through lunch until the late afternoon. Felix’s window of opportunity if he wants to get his work done today is, therefore, very narrow. That’s why Felix wakes up early that Tuesday morning and heads directly to the Cathedral, determined to catch Seteth during breakfast.

“Oh, Felix!” greets Flayn, rising up from the pews. “What an unexpected pleasure it is to see you! I do not believe I have ever before seen you during morning mass!” 

“No,” Felix says.

“I’m not sure what you mean,” Flayn answers.

“No,” Felix says, “I don’t have time to have a chat with you. I’m busy.”

“Oh,” Flayn says. She smiles very bravely. “Of course! I will not keep you from your very important duties. Good luck with your day, Felix! I hope you can accomplish whatever work it is that you need to get done.”

Felix stops. He sees Seteth near the rubble at the head of the church, leafing through an assortment of papers.

Felix growls, “_Fine_. We can talk.”

“Oh!” Flayn says. “You really want to? You are so kind, Felix.”

By the time Flayn is done chatting, morning mass has already started. Felix grits his teeth and sits, stands, and kneels through the service so he can slip in and grab Seteth immediately after it’s done.

The Professor beats him to it. That’s why, instead of getting any work done, Felix spends the day helping Flayn chop fruits as he waits for Seteth’s meetings to conclude. At lunch, Dimitri sends a page to Felix with a note asking to speak with him.

“I’m busy,” Felix tells the page, then asks Flayn to toss him another Noa fruit.

“I’m sorry,” Seteth says, late that afternoon. “I sent that document to Dimitri with the other Kingdom records about a week ago. You’ll have to ask him.”

Felix, very admirably, doesn’t scream. “Great,” he says instead. “I’ll go find Dimitri.”

“I believe he’s in the war room,” Seteth says. He sighs, and adds, “He has been very dedicated to his duties. He is an admirable young ruler in this respect, I will admit, but I fear he ignores the very mortal needs of his body. I’m not sure how best to offer him council on the matter.”

Felix scoffs. “There’s no council to be offered. The—Dimitri has chosen not just to live for Fódlan but to die for it as well.”

Seteth looks at him, a little startled. “Perhaps, if you believe that to live for something is the same as to die for it.”

“Isn’t it?”

Seteth studies him. It’s an unpleasantly familiar look. It reminds Felix of his father—not always, but sometimes. Times when his father would watch him, and it would feel like—it would feel like his father knew him. That he knew him better than Felix knew himself.

But his father _never_ understood. That was the problem. And maybe Felix never understood his father either.

“What would you do,” Seteth asks, “if you lived forever?”

Felix’s father also never accepted that Felix wasn’t interested in his lectures on his philosophy.

“There’s no point asking. People don't live forever.”

“Some can,” Seteth says, both polite and firm. “Crest blood is a remarkable thing. It has been found that in those whose blood is nearest to the source, it halts aging and leads even to potentially eternal life.”

“I have a Major Crest, but I’m not first-blooded. I’ll die the same as anyone else.”

“Even so,” Seteth says. “Humor me.”

Felix frowns. But it’s Seteth, and Seteth is—fine. He isn’t usually a waste of time. So Felix says, “Hmph. I’d perfect my sword skills, I suppose.”

“An admirable goal. What then?”

Felix’s frown deepens. “I don’t know. Reason magic.”

“And after that?”

“I’d become a master of flyting,” Felix sneers. “What’s the point of this?”

“An interesting choice of skills to master,” Seteth offers with absolute serenity. “Very well. Let us say that you spend the rest of your immortal life mastering various skills that interest you. What else?”

“I’d run Fraldarius,” Felix says. “For a time. I can’t imagine doing it—” He pauses. “Forever. I can’t do it forever. But I’d help with it until I had someone to take my place.”

“I see. Would you marry?”

“Why should I marry?”

“Well, to pass on the Fraldarius household when you’re through with it—”

“No,” Felix cuts in. “I wouldn’t marry. I’m not interested in having children. I’d give the household to someone from my uncle’s line. Or Dimitri will have upended the whole system by then, and it won’t matter.”

“Ah, so Dimitri’s alive in this scenario.”

“You said to humor the hypothetical, not an entirely different world.”

“So I did,” Seteth agrees. “But let’s move forward. If not marriage, what of lovers?”

Felix, feeling irritatingly hot again, says, “Why? Will you excommunicate me if I say yes?”

“The Church values marriage and respects its sacred bond,” Seteth replies, “but I do not see why it would have any business governing what you choose to do, so long as you harm no others and continue to follow the teachings of the Goddess. You are free to have whatever lovers you see fit.”

“Please stop saying ‘lovers.’”

“Then I should take that as an indication that you would have them?”

“What? No. That’s stupid.”

“Why is that?”

“I’m not interested,” Felix snaps. “Besides, what’s the point?”

“I’m not sure I follow.”

“I’m immortal. You didn’t say anyone else is.”

“You’re quite right,” Seteth says. There is something quiet in his voice. Something mournful. “There is no other immortal that you might call your beloved.”

The term, somehow, itches under his skin. Felix pushes the conversation forward. “So. I won’t have any—partners in this.”

“I see,” Seteth answers. He pauses, then asks, “What of friends?”

“I already have them,” Felix says.

“I mean, if you were immortal, would you have friends? You will, of course, outlive all those you now have. Would you make no new ones?”

Felix says nothing at all.

Seteth turns away from Felix and back to his bookshelf. His fingers brush across their spines. “Yes,” he agrees. “Love is love, whatever form it takes. And so the pain of loss is unbearable each time it occurs, whether one loses lover, friend, or family. And perhaps, over time, each loss compounds upon the next, so that we feel in our grief the weight of everyone else now gone from our world.”

Felix swallows back, and curls his fingers into fists. He doesn’t want this. He has work he has to do. “Can I go now?” he demands.

“Of course. You are free to do as you please.”

Felix turns to go. But Seteth’s voice, half-absorbed by the cloth spines of the books before him, catches him on the way out.

“I once suggested that one would have to hate all people, if one only did not hate those who choose the same beliefs as oneself. Perhaps it is also true that it would be equally lonely to only accept the company of those who choose the same death.”

Felix closes Seteth’s door behind him.

“His Majesty has already retired to his room,” says Dedue, shuffling through some papers. “I am not certain where he left the papers you require. If you go to him now, you may catch him before sleep.”

Felix, very validly he thinks, asks in confusion, “Dimitri went to bed?”

Dedue pauses a moment. He seems to consider his words. Then he says, “His Majesty has seen fit to attend the council of others of late.”

“So you told him to go to bed,” Felix says.

Another pause. “Yes,” Dedue says, in a measured manner. “I suggested it. But His Majesty agreed because he felt it would be in the best interests of his health.”

Felix says nothing a moment. Then, a little stilted, he says, “Thank you.”

Dedue merely inclines his head, then returns to his task.

When Felix reaches Dimitri’s room, he finds the door is open. Inside is Mercedes, in a chair at the bedside. And Dimitri is in the bed—breathing paced steady with sleep, the scar across his eye obvious to see—

“Oh, hello, Felix,” Mercedes greets. “Did you need to talk to Dimitri?”

“He has my census papers,” Felix says.

Then he says nothing.

This doesn’t seem to bother Mercedes. She hums a moment to herself, straightening out the bed sheets over Dimitri. It surprises Felix that Dimitri doesn’t jerk awake at the movement. He knows Dimitri’s sleeping habits now, has been beside him in them often enough. On the best days, Dimitri is fitful in his sleep. On the worst it never comes. And always, the slightest sound or movement startles Dimitri awake with wild eyes and hands that seek a weapon.

When Felix was a child, he had once come across one of the Fraldarius knights dozing in the training grounds. He and Glenn were roughhousing, and their scrambling had shocked the woman awake. Felix didn’t understand what was happening before she had her sword at his throat, not even as the first drops of blood began to drip down his neck. Then he felt that pain and he started to cry, and she drew back and was shaking, and Glenn had grabbed Felix’s hand and pulled him away.

But Glenn was as confused as Felix was. That knight was very fond of Felix, and she had never seemed to have a temper, certainly not the kind to threaten them for playing around. Glenn, who knew basically everything, couldn’t explain to Felix why she had attacked him like that. It was only their father, coming to them later after he had seen the knight to a healer, who had been able to explain that it was not anger or thought of Felix but instinct, born from her service among their knights.

And then, some time after Felix turned fifteen, he understood it.

“Dimitri agreed to try to some herbs to help him with rest,” Mercedes explains to Felix. She leans over and idly brushes a few strands of Dimitri’s hair from where they had gotten caught on his lips. “I’m afraid I won’t be able to wake him up.”

“Hm,” says Felix. He looks at them both.

He says, “So. This is what you’ll do. As his wife.”

Mercedes folds her hands in her lap. She turns in her chair, so she can better face Felix, and thinks about her words. “I suppose it is something I hope to do,” she says, mild and unassuming, “and since I’ll be his wife, I suppose it’s as his wife that I’ll do it. But it’s something I would have done as his friend, if I were in Fhirdiad to help him.”

“I know,” Felix says. He does. He knows Mercedes’s heart would accept nothing less. And thinking of that heart, he has to ask her, “Is this what you want?”

Mercedes tells him, “I want to help people. For a long time, I thought that would only be possible with the Church. And I also thought it was something I would never get to have, because I felt like my fate wasn’t really mine to choose. But after speaking with Dimitri and taking the time to think it through, I decided this would let me do even more good than I could do with the Church. It would give me more power to help Fódlan and to help the people I care about most.”

“Isn’t it lying in the eyes of your Goddess?” He isn’t bitter. Not at her. Mercedes is more than suited to be queen.

“Oh, the vows of love aren’t any problem,” Mercedes says. “Love can be many different things, don’t you think? I don’t love Dimitri as you do, but I do love him all the same. It makes me happy to know I can be at his side to help him.”

Felix knows. Felix _knows_. Felix knows, and still—

“It isn’t traditional, but Dimitri and I have promised each other to be faithful to the agreement we made to work together for Fódlan. And we do care for each other very deeply. So I don’t mind that our marriage won’t be what everyone thinks it is. It would be nice if I didn’t have to marry Dimitri to have that power, but…” Mercedes smiles. “I think Dimitri has a wonderful heart. But he doubts himself so much, especially when it means others will suffer. That’s a good thing, because it means he’ll be very careful about the consequences of his actions, and that will mean a lot of good for the world. But I think that having a second ruler will also help balance all the problems that can come from that compassion. That’s why I’m happy to do it.”

Felix doesn’t say he could be that ruler. He can’t be. Even if the Dukedom weren’t a monstrous enough burden, even if Felix didn’t hate the ostentatiousness of royalty, even if Felix was ready to accept all the absurd rules and maddening demands of a court life—

Fódlan wants a queen. It wants an heir. It wants someone _willing_ to be queen and parent to its prince and princesses, all those things Felix doesn't want for himself. And if Dimitri is going to get all the changes he wants for Fódlan, he will have to give Fódlan all the things it wants that don’t really matter.

His whole life. And his death.

“So you see,” Mercedes says, “marrying Dimitri gives me a great many things I want, and it doesn’t really stop me from having other things I might be interested in later. He isn’t someone forced on me by my father, after all, and he wouldn’t want me to do whatever he commanded and not seek happiness of my own. I think it could be the best option for everyone.”

She gets to her feet. And she takes Felix’s hands in hers.

“Hm, you know…” she starts, with a curious smile. “I have some more work to get done for now, but someone needs to watch Dimitri for a couple hours to make sure that the herbs didn’t affect him too strongly. Would you mind keeping an eye on him for me?”

“What,” Felix says, staring at their locked hands.

She squeezes his fingers. “Just be sure that his breathing stays steady,” she says, and then leaves him with warm fingers, confusion, and Dimitri asleep in his bed.

There is no one else there. What can Felix do but settle in across from Dimitri? Dimitri’s breaths are long and deep, much steadier than Felix has seen them in years, or maybe even ever—Felix doesn’t really remember how Dimitri breathed as a child. It must have been quicker. They were smaller, so they had smaller lungs, and their breaths had to have come faster for it. But now, watching Dimitri’s chest rise and fall, he doesn’t know.

It isn’t often in Felix’s life that he’s had an opportunity to mistake a corpse for someone asleep. There is no ambiguity about a severed head or a gaping wound across someone’s gut. Felix has spent more time picking through a battlefield, trying to determine if a body is dead, doomed or merely dying without help, than he has ever spent at someone’s bedside watching them slip away.

That was probably how his mother went. He was too young to know. But Glenn told him that the doctors said she’d died sleeping. He said that he and their father weren’t allowed to be near her as she died for fear that they’d catch her sickness. 

But Felix never heard of it from their father. He didn’t talk about that, like he didn’t sing anymore unless Glenn and Felix begged him, or go through certain papers. It was one of the things that, Felix now realizes, his father must have buried along with his mother’s corpse. But once, after Glenn died, Felix had caught his father deep in his cups. He had thought that what he’d overheard was about the late king, but now he wonders.

His father, alone in his office with the portraits on its walls, had been apologizing. He had said to one or maybe all of them, “I wish I had been there with you.”

He had said, “I wish it had been me instead.”

Felix could die before everyone else. There will still be battles, and he’ll be first to wet his blade with the blood of their enemies. But even if it isn’t battle, there’s disease, assassination, accident. He could always go first. But, most likely—

Dimitri breathes in, and the sheets rise with the rise of his chest. Dimitri breathes out.

He tries to imagine not being there when Dimitri dies.

He tries to imagine not being there while Dimitri lives.

“I’m not going to live with regrets,” Felix tells the darkness. “I'm a shark.”

Then he glares at Dimitri in the bed.

Dimitri, still sleeping, has no retort.

“Ah, Felix?”

Felix starts up from the chair to see Dimitri: Dimitri, pushing himself up from the bed, blinking at him slow and blearily. The morning sun catches across his face and brightens his eye, and Dimitri is so drowsy and open, yawning before Felix, forgetting for a moment to cover his mouth.

“Did you stay here all night? You should have gone back to your own bed, I was not in any trouble—”

“I want to wake up to this,” Felix blurts out.

“Ah?” Dimitri says.

“I want to—wake up. To you.” The words, choking out, burn across his face. “I don’t care about the bonds of marriage. The entire system is an archaic means of preserving the power and prestige of bloodlines. It has nothing to do with what I want from you.”

Dimitri, opening his mouth, is cut off by Felix commanding, “Shut up. I have to finish saying this.”

So Dimitri closes his mouth. And then Felix realizes he doesn’t know what to say.

So he says, “Fuck,” instead.

Dimitri starts laughing.

“I will run a blade through your gut,” Felix spits out. It’s too warm. He hates this. He shoves his face into his hands. “I’ll bleed you out here and spit on your corpse.”

Felix registers the rustle of cloth and the shift of bedsprings nearby. He grits his teeth.

“Felix,” Dimitri says. His voice is near. He is warm. “May I please see your face?”

“No,” Felix tells him.

A pause. “Very well,” and Felix hears the intake of breath, and the stupidity of Dimitri saying _ to Felix’s hands_ whatever he’s going to say next is so overwhelming that he drops them away from his face.

This is a mistake, because now he has to look at Dimitri directly.

“It was Mercedes,” Dimitri says, “who first came to me to suggest that there was no need to deny myself the pleasures of your love—” (Felix can’t stop himself from letting out a noise like that of a disemboweled man) “—merely because we had chosen to work together through marriage.”

“Of course she said that.” Felix tries very hard to make it a sneer. “That woman is the strangest would-be nun I’ve ever met.”

Dimitri continues, “The next to make the suggestion to me was Sylvain.”

Felix groans.

“Then came Annette, who seemed very distraught at the idea that either of us should deny ourselves happiness, and Ingrid, who promised that as my knight she would see to it that no rumors would get between me and happiness. I believe she and Ashe must have spoken beforehand, as he loaned me a book about the courtly affair of Lady Ygraine and the Rose of Itha.” Dimitri pauses then, clearing his throat, and says, “That story, while happy, seemed to me to be one that, hm, would not have been kept in your father’s library. Ah, and after Ashe, Dedue made a comment somewhat in the abstract about self-denial and its follies. Then it was Lysithea, who called me a fool for missing such an obvious solution to my problems, and I believe after that I was approached by Bernadetta—or was it Hapi who spoke to me then?—”

“Did _everyone_ get involved in our business?” Felix gets out.

Terribly, Dimitri answers. “You are much loved, Felix.”

Felix, choking, snaps back, “They love _you_, idiot.”

Dimitri starts to consider this, then seems to decide that he’d rather just hold Felix’s hands. “In sum, it seems our classmates believed that my sense of honor was denying us both happiness for the sake of duty, when no such sacrifice was needed. This was phrased more or less gently, depending on the intervention. And, reflecting on their words, I resolved to speak with you on the matter yesterday. Unfortunately I was not able to find a time to meet.”

“Hngh,” Felix says. He pauses. “Did Seteth talk to you?”

Dimitri blinks. “Seteth? No. And, ah, Gilbert does not appear to be aware of the discussion at hand.” He clears his throat again. “But when I asked the Professor for advice on whether or not it would be appropriate to have an affair with you despite the bounds of my marriage, they seemed confused that we had not already agreed upon it. Then they attempted to absolve me of any guilt for my affair.” Dimitri pauses. “I do not believe they quite yet understand how absolution is done.”

Felix groans.

“Yet honor has not been my concern,” Dimitri continues. With a gentle tug on Felix’s hands, Dimitri draws Felix’s eyes back to his. It is almost too much. “I can vow to love you each hour of every day,” Dimitri says, “and I will not be forsworn. But I cannot offer to be always at your side, nor can I promise to always put us first, no matter how desperately I may wish to do so. You know where my duties lie. It is cruelly unjust to offer you less than what you deserve.”

“I want _you_, you absolute buffoon,” Felix says. Something is in his throat. “And I told you not to decide what I deserve.”

“Yes,” Dimitri answers. “You did tell me that.” Dimitri smiles.

Felix had something to say about details—about what he exactly wants from them, and all the idiotic societal things he doesn't care about having, and that sharks don't have regrets because they find ways to take what they're after so that's what Felix will do. But that smile is a smile for Felix. So Felix claims it, and when he tastes Dimitri’s mouth he only feeds his hunger. He moves closer, half off the chair, and Dimitri answers back with his fingers dug into Felix’s hair. Felix growls, knowing what it will do to his hair, but Dimitri only laughs, and Felix wants to feel more of _that_ and presses inwards, as Dimitri pulls him in, and his need is ravenous and endless and nothing can cut between them where they sit.

“I’m so happy for you two!” Mercedes says from the doorframe. Felix jerks up fast enough to bang his nose against Dimitri’s and still see Sylvain raise his hand to her for a high five.

Felix grabs Areadbhar from the desk. Dimitri throws himself back in alarm so hard that he cracks the stone behind him.

Later that day, after evening has fallen and they have tackled their separate tasks around the monastery, they meet in the war room with hunger and too much paperwork between them. They fall into an easy rhythm, like they sometimes did on the road—anticipating each other’s requests for pen or paper, clarifying gaps in each other’s knowledge on Fódlan's legal rulings—humming idly (Dimitri) and correcting a mistaken tune (Felix). It is after Felix hands Dimitri a codex he needed on Alliance law regarding taxable goods that Dimitri pauses, his fingers brushing Felix’s on the book, and looks over to him.

“You know, Felix,” he says, light and smiling, “Although marriage may be an archaic institution, I believe I may enjoy an opportunity to swear to you my eternal devotion.”

“You’re unbearable,” Felix tells him, deciding that in the name of peace on Fódlan, Annette needed to get to work inventing a spell to help people keep cool in idiotically hot climates.

“Ah, and yet you’ve chosen to endure me a great deal nonetheless.”

“Shut up and do your paperwork,” Felix snaps. “Or I’ll shut you up myself.”

Dimitri looks at him and blinks. Felix can’t decide if his expression is innocent or not. 

He wants to find out.

A knock, loud and direct, has Felix turn with a scowl to see Ferdinand at the door, warm and cheerful.

“What do you want,” Felix snaps.

“Felix!” Ferdinand greets. “I have some questions to ask Dimitri about Adrestia’s future governance, but I am glad I have had the opportunity to catch you. How have you fared with work on your census?”

Felix says, “Shit.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note that Byleth’s min-maxing is DEDICATED. They shoved Hanneman right into Lysithea’s face and demanded he Get To Work. Assume that they really did work their hardest to get everyone a happy ending! 
> 
> Felix and Dimitri will also have been working hard to figure out a way to get this relationship sorted out so they're both happy, which, hint: there is just the epilogue to go! It will feature a time jump, but it will not involve anyone at a train station naming their children after the bravest people they knew. They may HAVE children, that I don't mention, named after the bravest people they knew. I can’t promise you they won’t. But the main focus there is on Dimitri and Felix's not-legally-married-but-like-isn't-it-even-MORE-legal-than-legal-if-the-pope-says-it-counts? life.
> 
> Thanks to [amorekay](https://archiveofourown.org/users/amorekay) for the beta, again. Special thanks for telling me I could cut the dream part! I hate writing dreams. Also, Lushka as Felix’s childhood nickname I took from [what is a heart but a haunting?](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21981808/chapters/52454071) by velvetcrowbars. Moon, you are a genius.
> 
> I'm on twitter @ [marezafic](https://twitter.com/marezafic) if you'd like to follow for more fic stuff and various FE3H tweeting!


	8. outro: pluto

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Felix and Dimitri do a gift exchange. It's one for the history books.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Warnings:** Most things are pretty calm this chapter! There are, however, references to the kind of violence that happens in the game, including to the violence enacted on Duscur. This chapter is post-canon, so Dimitri is vaguely comphet-married, as per last chapter, but it’s something everyone is making work! There are a couple of fade-to-black moments of NSFW implications.
> 
> For the idea of Zoltan being from Duscur, I am pretty sure the origin is [this thread](https://twitter.com/DedueFanclub/status/1206994378721349632)! I took some liberties with the concept so I could bring some ideas here to a close. It’s such a cool concept that I was excited to get to use it.

One year to the day that Felix chose a life with Dimitri, Dimitri takes Felix up to the highest tower in Fhirdiad Castle, when the sky is sea dark and the stars glitter like shards of ice. It’s after one of those annoying little parties they have to constantly hold at court, so Dimitri is dressed in blue furs and silver embroidery to match the night sky. A ceremonial sword sits at his hip.

Felix is immediately on alert. The idiot obviously has something _romantic_ planned. 

When they reach the top, Dimitri clasps Felix’s hands in his and looks into his face. Felix has been learning to suffer such gestures with dignity, particularly because Dimitri never pushes him about eye contact. That doesn’t make it less agonizing.

“Felix,” Dimitri says, “I wish to offer you my thanks for the roles you have taken in my life and the good you have done me. You have been my friend and my conscience, my advisor both in support and in disagreement. More than that… you are my beloved partner.”

A dignified dying noise chokes Felix.

“I know well that you find the very notion of marriage ‘antiquated nonsense’ and ‘nothing to do with you,’” Dimitri continues. “As such, I ask that you do not consider this a gesture of an antiquated tradition. Rather, please understand this as token of my devotion.”

“The ‘antiquated tradition’ part is moot point, unless you’ve decided to take up the Professor on their bizarre idea that getting married by the Archbishop would make us ‘extra married’ on the ground of their Holiness. Which might be absurd enough to be true, but I’m still not interested—wait, what token?”

Dimitri smiles. “Do I have your permission, Beloved?”

“Permission for what?” Felix snaps. Dimitri merely keeps their hands clasped, waiting. After another noise escapes Felix’s tightened throat, he breathes out, “Fine, yes, give me your damn token. But only because you said it’s coming out of sentimentality and not tradition.”

Felix is still not used to the way Dimitri’s smile has filled out with the rest of his face, the way these long moons of rebuilding have also built up the frame of the man he loves. It’s arresting. 

Then Dimitri releases Felix’s hands, unbuckles the sword at his hip, and presents it to Felix sheathed, as if a gift to a fellow king.

“You will find it suited to your hand,” Dimitri says as Felix draws the blade loose. Felix does—it’s a perfect fit, balanced to him precisely. It settles as easily in his palm as the swords that brought him through the war. Dimitri must have used those swords for comparison when he commissioned this. 

“Decent,” Felix concedes. “But I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. You’ve always had a good eye for weapons.” Felix gives it an experimental swing.

A momentary flash in moonlight stops him. When he looks at Dimitri he sees that warm, full smile that marks trouble. Felix flips the blade over so he can see what made the pommel flash.

It’s a sapphire. Not just _any_ sapphire, Felix knows the shape of it, from countless portraits over the centuries—from the oil-painted hands of Kings and Queens Consort dating back to the time of the King of Lions. In better light, Felix knows he would be able to see Loog’s own sigil etched carefully into the surface.

“You must be joking,” Felix says. The sapphire is dull but full of light under the half moon. “This should be in the vaults. It should be in a _ring_.”

“I did, ah, get official permission beforehand,” Dimitri says. There’s the first suggestion of worry ruining that self-satisfied smile. “If you do not like it, or feel it is too overt a gesture, one that might draw attention that wouldn’t please you, of course I will return it—”

“Don’t you dare,” Felix snaps. “You can’t just take a gift back after handing it over.” 

Dimitri’s frown returns to a smile, and a fist unclenches around Felix’s heart.

Then Felix’s eyes narrow.

“But don’t think this is over,” Felix says. He prods Dimitri’s chest, which is very firm, but this does not distract him at all. “I’m going to get you back for this.”

“Felix,” Dimitri says, voice full of warmth. “I do not ask for an answering gift. Merely to have your love answer my own, and to know that you wish for our relationship to endure, is all I ask.”

“You’re sentimental and stupid,” Felix answers. He replaces his pointing finger with the tip of the blade that balances so well in his hand, as he would at the start of a spar. “Get ready to be completely overwhelmed, Dimitri.”

Dimitri looks down the long line of the sword aimed at his throat, all the way to Felix’s face. “Ah,” Dimitri says, thoughtfully. “I would like very much to kiss you now.”

Dimitri does not just kiss him. But that doesn’t distract Felix from his mission. Felix is going to completely obliterate Dimitri with a token of their connection.

Winning a battle, Felix learned in the war, is not just about your personal strength. You need allies to support your strength with their own. So the next moon, when it’s decided that Queen Mercedes will be taking with her on her next diplomatic journey to Duscur Sir Ashe, royal knight and famed fusion cuisine chef, Felix asks to accompany them for errands of his own.

“Oh!” Mercedes says, helping her ladies pack her bags. “Don’t you want to wait to go with Dimitri? He was discussing with Dedue taking a trip in early Ethereal Moon.”

“No,” Felix says. Mercedes points him toward a pile of dresses, and Felix brings them over to her. “This is urgent.”

“Hm, if you say so!” Mercedes answers. “That sword looks very handsome on you, by the way. Have I mentioned that yet?”

Felix, shooting her a look, answers, “More than once.”

Several of the Queen’s ladies exchange smiles.

So Felix rides out with Mercedes and Ashe to Duscur. When Dedue meets them at the border, after all the formalities are over, Felix pulls him aside to talk.

“I’m looking for a blacksmith, one from Duscur,” Felix begins.

Dedue glances up from Felix’s sword, shining under the midday sun, and says, “I will draw you a map.”

“I’m not looking for just _any_ blacksmith—”

“I know who you are looking for,” Dedue says. He sighs. It’s an honest expression of how he really feels, something that’s become more common since the war ended and Duscur began its rebuilding. Felix finds that he likes the stubbornly practical man Dedue’s revealed himself to be. “I will not tell Dimitri of your mission.”

“It isn’t about Dimitri,” Felix says. Dedue raises his eyebrows at him, and Felix pauses. “It’s a surprise. I’m planning to catch him off-guard to claim the advantage.”

Dedue shakes his head.

With a very annoying reminder to be careful—“Our culture encourages hospitality, but a year of good faith cannot erase the wariness earned in massacre and a decade of violence and hatred”—Dedue gives Felix a map that leads him winding through the mountains, separated from the rest of the royal party. Three days in, he is able to find his goal: a small village built into the mountainside, with houses like steps layered into the stone. Several look as if they have been rebuilt from fresh stone.

Dedue is right—they _are_ wary of Felix, dressed in Faerghus furs and wearing the well-woven markers of his nobility. But that Duscur hospitality is legendary for a reason, and the few phrases of the language that Dedue had taught him—pronounced poorly, according to Dedue, but with admirable confidence, according to Mercedes and Ashe—earn him some good will. So does the fact that, when he goes into the market to purchase food, Felix doesn’t take at face value the shopkeeper’s comment that it’s worthless, and then his suggestion that it’s a gift. Instead, Felix insists on bartering for a fair price.

Learning these customs hadn’t come easily to Felix. He’s never liked the circumspection common in Adrestia and Leicester, and he doesn’t understand this kind any better. But Ashe’s patient lessons on Duscur prove worth it: the people he talks with all smile a little more, and are guarded a little less, when he shows respect for their customs instead of trying to impose his own ways. 

Their exchange done, shopkeeper points him down to the next row of buildings and two structures along. Felix thanks him as Dedue taught him. The shopkeeper is too kind to laugh at his stumbled words.

Felix decides that he is going to get a _lot_ better at this language even if it kills him.

When he arrives at the smithy, he greets the old woman in a leather apron behind the counter with his poor Duscur. “You can speak the Fodlan tongue,” she tells him. It’s embarrassing how much of a relief it is.

“I’m looking,” he says, “to make a commission from the blacksmith Zoltan.”

“I’m she,” answers the old woman. Felix looks at her again. Then he sees it: she’s old, but her arms are clearly thick and strong from the forge, her skin worn by heat as much as by age. Everything about her speaks of the master blacksmith that Felix has admired for so long. “What are you looking for?” she continues. “Not an idol, I’m guessing from the look of you. I didn’t know your people had heard I was still around.”

“A—comrade told me you were here,” Felix admits. 

“Ah,” she says with a smile. “You’re one of Dedue’s friends.”

Somehow, it doesn’t feel strange to hear Zoltan call them that. “Right. So, I’m here to commission a sword from you.”

The warm smile falls from her face. Her arms fold, and her expression sets. It reminds Felix of an armored knight, but with much less likelihood of give. “I don’t know why Dedue didn’t let you know, but I don’t make weapons anymore.”

“What?” Felix stares at her. “But—you’re the greatest swordsmith in Fodlan. In the _world_. Every weapon you make is a unique work of art. No blade can stand up to your craftsmanship—”

“Aye,” she interrupts. “And no blade did, when your people came in carrying my swords and put them through my people.”

There isn’t much to be said to that.

Zoltan watches him in his silence, likely waiting for him to argue with her choice. But he doesn’t. He won’t.

Instead, Felix slips his hands into the pocket of his coat. His fingers curl around the cool metal and stone tucked into the fur there. “I respect your choice, Master Zoltan. I would not ask you for a weapon meant to kill. But if you’ll permit it, I’d like to explain the sword I came here to request.”

He doesn’t know if she studies him—he doesn’t meet her eyes—but he can guess, from the long pause, from the slow tapping of her foot. Then, at last, she says, “Alright. Tell me your commission. But no promises, you hear?”

Felix draws from out of his pocket a ring of silver studded lapis lazuli. He sets it on the counter for her to see. “I want a sword that’s fit for stopping an assassin and pointless on a battlefield. A challenge worthy of the greatest blacksmith in the world, if she doesn’t find it against her conscience. And I want putting these stones on the blade to be what does it.”

Zolan says nothing. Then: “You came all this way to ask me to make a bad sword.”

Finally, Felix looks up into her eyes. “I came all this way to ask you to make a sword that is perfectly suited to the man I’m giving it to.”

Zoltan glances back down at the ring. She takes it in her hand and turns it over, her firm and wrinkled fingers running over the stones that decorate the head. “What’s this for, young man?”

“It’s a token,” Felix says. She raises her eyebrows. “Of my devotion,” Felix forces out.

“Of your devotion, huh?”

She looks _so_ wry that Felix, overwhelmed by heat on his face, says, “There’s nothing strange about it. Faerghus nobles exchange weapons all the time. It’s just one of our customs.”

“It is, is it.” When she reaches across the counter for the sword at Felix’s hip, two different instincts have him grabbing the hilt to cover up the pommel and keep it out of her grip. She glances up at him and grins. “Another token with nothing strange about it?”

Before Felix can answer, she has pocketed his ring. 

“I’ll make your token, young man,” Zoltan says. “It will be the finest blade that could ever be utterly useless except if a king finds himself cornered by a couple of assassins.”

For some reason, Felix finds it difficult to reply.

Since Zoltan has plenty of other work—“I don’t work at the whims of young foreigners with special tokens to give out”—Felix pays her in advance, thanks her for the time, and departs to regroup with the rest of the royal party after showing his gratitude to the village for their hospitality. The next moon, Dedue returns to the palace with a long, thin package that he hands to Felix after the end of the day’s meetings.

“I believe this is the ‘token of devotion’ you ordered,” Dedue says, impassively.

“Shut up,” Felix says. “Don’t say another word.”

The corners of Dedue’s lips twitch. “Of course.”

It’s hardly difficult to drag Dimitri up to the same tower he’d taken Felix to three moons earlier, but getting him up there without him asking too many questions? _That_ is a challenge. Fortunately, Felix has long since learned Dimitri is easily kept quiet by an insistent kiss or ten.

Felix is a bit out of breath by the time they get to the top. Still, he regroups himself, dragging Dimitri to the center of the tower chamber. “Here,” Felix says, shoving the package into Dimitri’s hands. “Take it.” 

“Ah?” Dimitri answers. He looks at Felix, then at the package, then at Felix again. “Thank you, Felix.”

Felix narrows his eyes. “Don’t thank me yet. You’re supposed to open it.”

“Ah, yes!” Dimitri quickly pulls the sword from out of the wrapping. It sits nicely in its leather sheath, the distinct embossing in overlapping geometric shapes marking its origins. “A Sword of Zoltan?”

“What does it look like?” Felix says. Then pauses. “It’s a present.”

Annoyingly, Dimitri smiles at him and says, “Thank you,” without even drawing the sword. Then he turns it over, like he’s looking for something on the hilt.

So Felix tells him, “Don’t look at the hilt, you idiot. See if it’s a _good sword_.”

“I cannot imagine you would hand me any blade you considered unworthy, Felix,” Dimitri answers with frustrating generosity of spirit. “Nor can I imagine Zoltan would make a poor blade.”

“Still check.”

Dimitri blinks at him. But then he smiles, and with an inclination of his head, he answers, “As you wish.”

The light in the tower is weaker this Ethereal Moon night, clouded over by the threat of snow. Still, when Dimitri draws the blade, the dull and scattered moonlight of the evening catches along its edge.

It also throws light on the thin line of lapis lazuli pieces set along the fuller of the blade.

“Oh,” Dimitri says.

Before Dimitri can ask something embarrassing, Felix says, “It’s a poor weapon for killing. Because your work isn’t to kill, as you’ve said. The sword will let you defend yourself if you must, but the flaw of putting gemstones in the design makes it unsuited to war.”

Dimitri searches Felix’s face. Felix decides to examine the flagstone flooring of the tower instead. 

“You got me this… symbolically?” Dimitri asks.

“No,” Felix answers. “It’s practical. It’s a practical sword you shouldn’t use.”

Dimitri does not reply to this.

This leaves Felix with no choice but to inform the floor: “The lapis lazulis are my father’s, from the Fraldarius mines. He gave my mother this ring as a gift just before I was born. That’s what our steward told me, anyway. It won’t be getting any use, so I chose it for this.”

Felix feels, rather than sees, the motion towards him. Dimitri’s warmth comes close. Then there’s the brush of fingers against his cheek. Gentle, full of care.

Felix closes his eyes and leans into Dimitri’s hand.

“Thank you, Beloved,” murmurs Dimitri. His voice comes from somewhere close to the top of Felix’s head. “I am grateful for the thought you put into this gift.”

“It isn’t a gift,” Felix mutters. “It’s a competition, and I _won_.”

He feels Dimitri’s laughter against his hair.

When Dimitri draws him up for a kiss, Felix accepts. Slowly, he relaxes into it. Then they forget to stop kissing.

Dimitri’s hair has gotten thicker over the past year, maybe from better food to help it grow. Felix isn’t sure. But he is pretty confident that he enjoys the extra grip.

Every time it comes up later, Felix will say it’s Dimitri’s fault. He’ll say it no matter who asks, because things like this are Dimitri’s fault, invariably, and they never have anything to do with anything Felix says. Felix is certain.

Five years after Dimitri’s ascension to the throne, Sylvain, now Margrave Gautier, successfully negotiates a peace with Sreng, complete with a return of the southern Sreng territories that had been conquered and claimed in his father’s time. There is grumbling in Faerghus about ceded territory, of course, but Mercedes is very good at managing the nobles whose grumbling is at the level of _troublesome_, and as for the ones who tend towards _dangerous_, well, Felix has developed a good instinct for ferreting them out. They’ve become deft hands at tackling these problems before they start.

But Sreng, their oldest enemy, is the last of their neighbors to set down arms. Brigid, Dagda, Almyra, Duscur—everyone else has settled into peace by now. For the first time in living memory, Fodlan and all its neighbors are at peace.

They celebrate peace with Sreng at Castle Gautier. There are even fewer annoying politicians than there have been in years before, as more and more of the old lords have been made to give way to people with new ideas and better ideals.

And when the official feast is over, all their former classmates who had managed to make it up to the celebrations gather together for what Annette insists on calling “a mini class reunion.” Everyone seems to relax in this cluster of familiar faces.

It’s—peaceful. It’s peaceful in a way that Felix is slowly learning to accept.

That’s right up until Dorothea stands up, demands silence, and announces she would like to share a song she has been practicing with Ingrid and Sylvain’s help.

“I did not know that either was interested in the singing arts,” says Dimitri.

“Ingrid was helping me with Faerghus’s lay traditions,” Dorothea explains. “And Sylvain was making sure I got the most up-to-date version.”

“Dorothea’s pronunciation is truly impressive,” Ingrid tells them.

Felix asks, “The most up-to-date version of what.”

In a poor imitation of innocence, Sylvain answers, “Just something I’ve been hearing around.” He smiles.

“What,” Felix repeats, “have you been hearing.”

Dorothea does not wait for Felix to get his answer. Instead, in her clear, beautiful voice, she begins a recitation in the style of a traditional Faerghus lay:

> From bloody war and bitter clash,  
The heavy losses in our past,  
Fodlan’s people now are free.  
But though the world takes on changed shape  
And lord and peasant both now make  
The law on what our world shall be—  
In this, the dawn of world born new  
I sing this lay fresh-forged for you  
Of devotion and chivalry:  
This tale will tell you how it came  
That jeweled sword and stone-marred blade  
Were offered with sweet vows exchanged—  
‘tween Felix, and his King Dimitri.

“What,” Felix asks.

“I know this one!” cheers Raphael.

“I like the more raunchy ones,” Sylvain says. “But Dorothea insisted on the most popular version.”

“The more what ones?” Dimitri asks.

“Excuse me,” Dorothea says, very sweetly. “But you gentlemen surely aren’t interrupting a famed songstress as she shares her talents with the people, are you?”

Everyone shuts up.

The song is fifty seven verses long. It is fifty seven verses of poetic high sentiment and knightly devotion. It is fifty seven verses of his and Dimitri’s “Loog and Kyphon”-worthy bond. Felix sits, in silence, and he endures.

He endures right until it’s all over, and everyone claps, and Sylvain shouts, “Now give us the other version!”

Before Felix can kill their host, the extremely successful diplomat who had made peace with one of Faerghus’s oldest enemies, Dimitri grabs his hand and drags him away through the halls. He does not let go of Felix’s hand the entire way back to his own guest quarters, where he shuts the door behind them and pulls Felix to the center of the room. 

For the course of their walk, Felix has been assuming Dimitri’s grip on his hands was to prevent a murder. That’s a strategically sound call. So Felix is surprised when Dimitri’s hold shifts, so that Dimitri might hold _both_ his hands in his and look deeply, sincerely into Felix’s eyes.

“What?” Felix asks.

“Are you alright, Felix?” Dimitri says. The worry lines on his face, grown deeper with age, are cast into stark shadow by the fireplace that is the room’s only warmth and light.

Felix, baffled, frowns back at those lines. “Alright about what?”

“I know that you despise chivalry and the worship of fealty and knightly devotion. Yet it seems that your relationship to me has seen your image warped to match the very ideals you hate. Your unhappiness was palpable in the Hall, such that I could not help but wonder...”

Ah. Dimitri is being an idiot.

“Don’t be a fool. I already told you what I wanted five years ago. You gave me a sword, and I gave you one back. It doesn’t matter how strangers prattle as long as we’re both satisfied.”

“What the world says will be remembered by posterity,” Dimitri murmurs. “It is what will be known of us when we are both dead and gone.” Dimitri glances up from their clasped hands, to Felix. And he smiles. “But let me guess: the ghosts of the future, like those of the past, are mere illusions to which you will not be bound.”

“So you’re not a complete fool,” Felix says. Pushing up on his feet, he presses his forehead against Dimitri’s.

“I am,” Dimitri says. “But I am a fool granted the great privilege of knowing the heart of Felix Hugo Fraldarius. It is a gift I value above all else.”’

“You’re annoying and sentimental,” Felix mutters against Dimitri’s mouth. “And just because it doesn’t matter and I gave you a sword back doesn’t mean the song isn’t your fault.”

“Of course,” Dimitri says. Felix feels the smile against his lips. “It is doubtless all my fault.”

Felix tells him, “Idiot. Take your robes off.”

It is a familiar ritual. And no one is around to observe what happens there between Felix and his King Dimitri—whatever they might guess.

Of King Dimitri, all do know,  
His virtue in all things he shows,  
And who could speak of him ill word?  
He wandered crownless many days  
‘cross sundered lands who’d lost their way:  
By tragedy his youth was gird.  
But he returned, our savior king  
As Loog’s bold spear and Klaus’s ring.  
The tempest bold for which we yearned.  
Of King Dimitri—yes, you know!—  
Our king of knights! Our great hero!  
This lay unfolds sweet love that he has earned.

And Felix, Duke, of surest hit:  
His clever sword and sharpened wit  
All kneel in awe when he does stand.  
This bravest soul’s beloved no less  
For when our kin, by war distressed,  
Cried out for blades to save this land:  
Then Felix fought, in ice-fierce storm  
To shield his people, as he’d sworn,  
And answered all knights’ oath’s demands  
Yes, Felix, Duke, of surest hit,  
I tell you now how he did gift  
His devotion to his king’s hand.

Felix stares up at the ceiling of the royal chambers. In the past two decades, Felix has become more than familiar with the deep, blue velvet of the canopy above the royal bed, the weight of its linen sheets and wolf-pelt furs, the distant sounds of the castle waking up. Out of the corner of his eye, he watches the sun creep along the writing desk settled against the doubled windows overlooking the courtyard below.

A rustle to his left.

“Ten more minutes,” Felix barks.

The rustling stops. A guilty silence.

Then, that familiar voice beside him: “You are certain that lying awake will help me sleep?”

“It’s Mercedes’s suggestion, not mine. And the point was that even if you can’t sleep, you get some rest by lying _quietly_. With your _eyes shut_. So no talking.”

A moment passes in silence. Dimitri is either listening to the suggestion, or wise enough to realize that answering will tell Felix he isn’t listening.

Felix hears another rustle and he opens his mouth to tell Dimitri to keep still—

—and feels warm fingers, rough and calloused, but always so carefully gentle in touch, wrap around his. They lock tight around his hand under the blanket.

Felix squeezes Dimitri’s fingers back.

“Just ten more minutes,” he reminds Dimitri. “Relax.”

When the time has passed, Felix tosses the sheets off. Dimitri is always more careful getting out of bed—it seems like the scars on his back only make movement more painful the older he gets. With the full light of morning flooded through the room, they help each other through the ritual of dressing: the simple stockings and undershirts, the embroidered trousers and tunics, the finely brocaded fur-covered cloaks. There are people whose job this is supposed to be, of course. But this private habit, for those moons when they keep each other’s company day and night, is one Felix jealously protects.

When they’re almost all put together, Felix turns to glance Dimitri over. He looks dignified. Kingly. He is older than Felix once dreamed he would ever grow to be.

He also looks like he is paying the price for several weeks of missing sleep. Felix brushes his finger against the dark circle under Dimitri’s left eye.

“How are you feeling?” Felix asks. “Is it working?”

Carefully, considering his reply, Dimitri answers,“I feel… better than nights when I have not tried this. And while I do not feel as well-rested as I do after taking sleeping herbs, there is also less of a—a fog, around my thoughts.”

Felix makes a noise to confirm. It’s Dimitri’s job to decide how he wants to handle these problems. Felix’s job is to help him how he asks.

“What of you?” Dimitri asks. “Do you feel rested?”

“I’m fine,” Felix answers with a shrug. He feels—jittery. There’s something in his spine and muscles, itching to break free. It has been moons since there have been any battles to handle, and for all that Felix has grown better at accepting peaceful days, long stretches without conflict still leave him on edge. “I would have been awake training by now anyway.”

“Ah,” Dimitri says, his expression falling, “I am sorry to have inconvenienced—”

Then he catches himself, just from the look on Felix’s face. He clears his throat.

“Thank you,” he corrects. “I appreciate that you have chosen to adjust your schedule to help me with this new attempt.”

Felix shrugs at that. “It’s nothing. I’ll have plenty of time in my mornings when I’m back in Fraldarius next fortnight.”

It is only a couple moons separated. When Fhirdiad’s itinerant court is on its yearly progress, all expect the Shield’s Successor to accompany the king, and for the rest of the year it’s no long trip between Fraldarius territory and Fhirdiad. But Felix can’t make his uncle play steward every single moon of the year. And besides, he wants to be sure his territory is being run right. Felix is a Duke now. The least he can do is see his people looked after.

Felix used to worry Dimitri would start moping when their times of separation come up. And while there are times it weighs on them both, this time, Dimitri just takes Felix’s hand in his. “Yes,” Dimitri says. “We must treasure the time we have together for as long as we have it.” He raises Felix’s hands to his lips.

The noise that erupts from Felix’s throat is wrong and unacceptable. He decides that it never happened. Instead, he yanks Dimitri forward and kisses him.

Dimitri laughs into his mouth. Felix, unfortunately, loves that.

“How long,” Dimitri asks, “until our first meeting of the day, Beloved?”

Felix lightly bumps Dimitri’s head—he’s just laughed at more—and mutters, “Ten minutes. It’s a breakfast meeting with the Adrestian delegates.”

“A shame,” Dimitri murmurs, his thumb stroking at the inside of Felix’s wrist. “I would have enjoyed a few more minutes in your sole company.”

Felix looks in Dimitri’s eyes—one covered over with a silver embroidered eyepatch, the other clear, bright, bold. Here.

Here, together.

“We’ll have time,” Felix says. He picks up a sword that isn’t much use, and he loops it into Dimitri’s belt. Dimitri answers by settling into place the one sword that has not left Felix’s side since it was first set in his hands. 

These two souls, from early youth  
Were bound together by old truth:  
Where Blaiddyd walk, Fraldar’us be.  
Their fathers sworn, as before their time,  
Their fathers’ fathers, in unbroken line,  
Did make their oaths unfailingly.  
But this bright bond of boyhood right  
Was tested by an endless night  
Of wicked plot and treachery.  
Listen close how two did grow  
Entwined upon Loog’s blessed bough,  
Were nearly cut by strife and foe,  
Yet proved their faith to history.

There are things that belong to the world around them. There are records and laws, public speeches and court meetings, proclamations and debates. There is the king’s steadfast devotion to improving the lot of his people and allowing them to chart their own course, his endless compassion and desire for a more just world, and there are the duke’s frustrated hours of censuses and surveys, all his protection and support for the people he has chosen to give his strength to protect. The world has their legends, stories, and songs. 

Then there are those things that are not for others. There are their doubts and their fears, their secret weaknesses. There are the words murmured in private rooms, and laughter that is too loud, and the names that mark them as partners and equals. There, too, is the truth behind a pair of swords that follow Felix and Dimitri all through their lives and that rest beside them in their graves. 

History is for the world around them. The rest belongs to them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story happened 1) because of a joke about the worst couple for fake dating at the worst time and 2) because my recently-turned-ARMY friend asked me to listen to a not particularly popular BTS song so we could talk about the vocals in it. Along the way, it grew dramatically in size, changed its focus, and ended up with an outro pretty different from my intentions. But I learned a lot along the way, _and_ I got to write a silly in-universe lay.
> 
> Special thanks to my friends, who were so supportive all the way through. Thank you again to [amorekay](https://archiveofourown.org/users/amorekay) for the beta read! It’s such a huge help every time.
> 
> Finally, thank you to everyone who has read all the way to the end. It really means a lot to me! It took a lot longer than expected, but it’s in part thanks to your support that I was able to finally complete 134340. Or, as I’ve been calling it in my head since I first decided how to structure the overarching plot: 
> 
> “Five Times Dimitri and Felix Pretended To Be Married, And One Time They Pretended Not To Be.”
> 
> ; )


End file.
